


Alternative Therapies

by K_dAzrael



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Ableism, Blood, Blow Jobs, Body Image, Chubby Kink, M/M, POC Kevin, Phone Sex, Rimming, Sex Toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-02-08 07:43:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1932507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_dAzrael/pseuds/K_dAzrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"That’s a doctor for you, listeners, always up late sending unsolicited pictures of their genitals to journalists, never available for comment during times of crisis. And now, a word from our sponsors."</p><p>Or, the story of how Kevin did not fall in love instantly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A headcanon of mine is that antimatter Carlos is an evil homeopath. Also, chubby kink because reasons.

“There is a new man in town. Who is he? Why his slovenly appearance? Why his creased and sweat-stained shirt? He claims he is a doctor. Well, haven’t we all performed surgery and heavily self-medicated, at one time or another? 

“Oh, my producer is just handing me some new information, listeners. Thank-you Daniel. You are SO helpful. It seems that the doctor’s name is César. He is here to run the Desert Bluffs Alternative Therapies and Wellness Clinic and Spa, right next to Fat Tito’s Gyros. Craving strips of meat? Who isn’t! Go to Tito’s – go there now. 

“Here in this press release César tells us all about how poorly we have all been served by the medical community up to now, and that he knows the people of Desert Bluffs are enlightened and ready to embrace a new and healthier tomorrow. There are a lot of typographical errors and it is careless, shoddy work. Down in the corner there is a picture of César smiling. His mouth is full of gold teeth and false promises and I am filled with HATRED.”

Kevin coughs to cover the voice crack form his unseemly loss of control. “Sorry about that, listeners! The people in charge know best, after all, who are we to question their appointments? No, it is not our job to question, however odd and inappropriate such appointments may seem. And everyone needs to do their job, and that is all they need to do – or even think of doing. Ever. And now, let’s go to the weather.”

As he flicks the broadcast over to the prerecorded segment, Kevin clutches at his chest. He so rarely feels anything that his body responds to emotion like it’s an infection. He struggles to breathe and his skin feels a size too tight, burning and itching and _crawling._

Kevin shakes himself all over and tries to regain control over his facial muscles. “ _You can hear a smile in the voice_ ,” his old mentor Lenore Bruton used to say. “Don’t make me get the clips again, Kevin.” 

Kevin smiles – he is a professional.

*~*~*

The next day Kevin breezes into the studio clutching his phenythalamine-swirl frappuccino and finds an interloper at his desk. The man is in his late thirties or early forties, short and heavy-set. He has dark, curly hair striped with silver at the temples and when he smiles he shows his upper teeth are mainly gold.

“Dr. César, I presume?” 

“That’s me. And you must be Kevin – _the_ Kevin.” César’s eyes give him a lazy once-over. “You are a lot better-looking in real life than in your press photo.” There’s a Latin American accent buried down there somewhere in the way he aspirates ‘you’.

“Thank-you,” Kevin says, voice raising in pitch with the tightness of his vocal cords. “It’s so thoughtful and yet inappropriate of you to say.”

César grins more widely. “Oh, they said you were a firecracker.”

Kevin takes in the studio and how much drier it is than it should be. The smell of bleach prickles his nostrils. “What did you _do_ in here?”

“I set your little hollow-eyed interns to work with a mop and bucket is what I did.” 

Kevin’s smile flickers and goes out. “Why are you here?” he hisses.

“Because I just love the show. After I caught it yesterday I said to the boys out in the lab – my superiors, and _yours_ – ‘Hey, where better to promote our new venture than on community radio?’ So here I am, your agony uncle for the day. If you like, you can come sit on my lap and tell me all your secrets. I’m very understanding.”

Kevin runs a hand back over his hair. There is a knot in his stomach of something hot and roiling and it takes effort to remain standing up straight. “I’m sure you are,” he says, “now get out of my chair.”

César spends the entire show with his hands linked behind his head and his feet up on the desk. The side of his shirt has come untucked from his pants and is showing a swathe of his stomach, which shakes when he laughs. Kevin glares at him intently, his fingernails leaving deep furrows on the edge of his (unnaturally dry) console. 

“Celine from Cactus Blossom, the thing a lot of people don’t know about illness is that it’s all caused by what we medical professionals term ‘miasms’. ‘Conventional’ medicine only treats symptoms, it doesn’t get really down in there to treat the cause. That’s why – after all the surgeries and the chemo-‘therapy’ those frauds at the county hospital gave you, you’re still little more than a walking corpse.” César meets Kevin’s glare and winks at him as if to suggest they share some kind of common outlook or secret. 

The caller wheezing makes the mouthpiece of her phone rattle. “How did the mia-things get into my lungs? I never even smoked. I worked in the factory where they make electronics, so do you think the chemicals–” 

“Good question, Celine. Miasms are attracted to inert bodies – maybe you were depressed, or maybe you were just lazy, who can say? All we really know for certain is you definitely brought it on yourself.”

“Oh,” says the caller. “And there’s nothing I can do?”

“Not with that attitude! Isn’t that right, Kevin?”

“It sure is, Dr. César!” Kevin chirps, now glaring at his guest with openly murderous intent. 

“Now why don’t you come on down to the Desert Bluffs Alternative Therapies and Wellness Clinic and Spa first thing tomorrow? We’ll get you fixed up with a whole battery of tests.”

“Will it cost a lot?”

César gives a low chuckle. “Celine, Celine – can you really put a price on your health, your happiness? Just come on down. I’m sure we can work out a payment plan to suit you and your surviving relatives.”

When the call disconnects Kevin takes the mic to squeeze in a few messages from their sponsors before they finish up. By the time he gets to his sign-off he has all but forgotten about his ‘guest’. “Until next time, Desert Bluffs,” he says, voice mellowing and his eyes falling closed, “until next time.”

A slow clap jolts him from his reverie. 

“Great show – we make quite the team, don’t you think?”

Kevin laughs affectedly. “By no means, César.”

César stands up and takes Kevin by both his shoulders. The studio lights glancing off his teeth are almost blinding. “I will see you again soon,” he says. “I’m just certain of it.” 

*~*~* 

The following week, Kevin is walking through New Town on his way back from Misty Glades Park when a voice arrests his attention: “Hey Kev!”

His head snaps around and he spies a figure lounging on the steps leading up to an apartment building. The man is sitting next to a cooler full of rapidly-melting ice from which a number of long-necked bottles protrude like drowning sailors in the Arctic ocean. He is wearing an A-shirt and jean shorts; the top button of the latter are open and his gut bulges over the waistband, showing a trail of dark hair that leads upwards, disappearing beneath the rucked hem of his shirt. 

Kevin smiles widely. “Ha ha. Never call me that, César.”

“Hot out, huh?” César observes with a wave of his hand before taking a pull on the open bottle of beer in his hand. “Too hot to think. I gave myself the day off.”

Scandalized, Kevin takes a reflexive step back. “You did what?”

“I don’t know how you stand it in that get up,” he tilts his bottle to indicate Kevin’s ensemble of a shirt, tie, and colourful hand-knitted vest decorated with a light patina of blood. “I thought the Mr. Rogers look was just for employee picture day.”

“Some of us like to cultivate a professionalism in all aspects of our daily lives.” 

César drains his beer and burps, then puts a hand into the cooler to feel around for another. “You want one of these?” 

“I have work to get back to.”

“If you say so,” César comes up with a handful of half-melted ice which he rubs around his neck. Kevin watches as the water trickles down into his collarbones and the centre of his chest, glistening on his mahogany-coloured skin. “I’ll see you around, Kev. Kev- _in_ ,” he corrects himself, with an insolent smile.

As Kevin stalks past him he hears the sigh of another bottle cap popping off. The hatred is so intense it’s like a knife to the chest, but Kevin makes himself keep walking. Then César begins to sing to himself, voice a little off-key but not without a sort of lazy richness: “ _Summertime, and the living is easy, fish are jumping and the cotton is high..._ ” 

That afternoon Kevin’s show contains an impromptu editorial: “Desert Bluffs is a sunny place to be – it’s a desert after all, and we are blessed by a smiling god. Just imagine that some unscrupulous people would use that as an excuse to slack off. To sit on their front steps and drink cheap imported beer and sing the hits from Gershwin operas badly – César THE SO-CALLED DOCTOR, with your messy hair and general lack of manscaping–” 

Daniel goes to knock on the glass partition, apparently not realising it is smashed, and tearing a long strip of synthetic skin off his wrist, exposing the metal and wires underneath. His mouth opens and then remains stuck agape as he pulls on the wire that continues to unspool around his hand. 

“In other news,” Kevin continues in a high, brittle tone, “Grandma Josephine called earlier to tell us to be on the look-out for angels. Remember, they are dangerous and very real. If you see an angel, call our Strex enforcers and bellow the word ‘EXODUS’. While you are waiting for them to arrive, why not book yourself an appointment with the reeducators? There will be some things you need to forget before you can once again reach peak productivity. And now, a quick word from one of our sponsors while I put out a fire in one of our personnel.” 

*~*~*

When Kevin enters the break room the next day he finds César sitting with his feet up on the communal table. He is thumbing slowly through the contents of a manilla file with a look of slow deliberation.

César looks up and he must see the mixture of horror and rage on Kevin’s face. “Oh, don’t worry – I’m not here to cut in on your show again.”

“Then can I help you with something?”

“How come you don’t wear a miniskirt to work anymore?” César asks, holding up a blood-smeared newspaper clipping of Kevin shaking hands with Mayor Pablo Mitchell at the opening of the Desert Bluffs Radio Roadshow a few years back. 

“The same reason some people should retire their jean shorts.” 

“You think?” César rocks back onto the back legs of the chair and gives Kevin’s body a long, appraising glance. “Looks good to me. I like something to hold on to, you know?”

Kevin smiles and tilts his head to one side. “What on earth makes you think I’m interested in your preferences, César?”

César grins. “You’re pretty ballsy, you know that? Considering I’m here in town at the request of your superiors and all.”

“Oh, is that a threat?”

“The opposite – I like it. You’re keeping it real, Kevin – or as real as a corporate drone can. Anyway, still love the show. In fact, I love it so much I make sure I tune in every single day. Yesterday’s was particularly enlightening.” He closes the file with an abrupt thump and stands up. “Guess I’d better give these files back to your station manager before her CPU overheats.”

“It sure does that a lot,” Kevin agrees brightly. “Maybe someone in your division should look into improving the design of the fan outlet.” 

“Aren’t you just so full of super-duper bright ideas, hmm?” Kevin refuses to move as César turns to pass him in the doorway. Their stomachs brush and it stokes something in Kevin that is more primal than even hatred. “Anyway,” César says from the corridor, “I have your cell number now. Maybe I’ll just have to give you a call sometime.”

“For professional reasons, I hope.”

César strokes his own jaw thoughtfully, stubble making a rasping sound against his fingers. “Well Kevin, you are always saying how I’m not professional.”

*~*~*

“Good morning Desert Bluffs! Well, a slight dampener has been put on our glorious, sunshiney, super-productive day by reports of a sort of a roving, sentient pandemic moving easterly over the city. I contacted this station’s least-favourite physician, who had the following insight to offer: ‘Hmm? What? I don’t know. Jesus, don’t you guys have a weatherman to ask about this penny-ante crap?’ When pressed he added: ‘Kevin, it’s six AM. Go back to sleep, then at least if it kills you you’ll go quietly.’ Then he hung up. That’s a doctor for you, listeners, always up late sending unsolicited pictures of their genitals to journalists, never available for comment during times of crisis. And now, a word from our sponsors.”

When Kevin exits the front door of the radio station he finds César waiting in the parking lot, leaning back against the hood of a massive gas-guzzler of a car that is covered in dings and rust-patches.

“Let’s go get some coffee or something,” he says. “The plague cloud thing drifted West over the retirement home, so I guess it’s safe downtown for now.”

Kevin hitches his sports bag higher on his shoulder. “I can’t stay very long.”

“No, how come? You got somewhere better to be?”

“I’m going to the gym, if you must know.”

“Yeah, what to get rid of your big ass? Because let me tell you, that shit is wild and untamable.” César stares at him for a moment. “That was a compliment.”

“Oh?” Kevin does his most terrifying smile. 

“Can’t win with you, huh?” César lets out a long-suffering sigh as he opens the passenger side door. “Come on, I know for a fact ‘@Kevin R. Free’ is ‘so into fro-yo right now. Hashtag-DELICIOUS’, so let’s go already.” 

*~*~*

“I’ve been meaning to ask, what happened to your eyes?” César says as he hands over a cup of frozen yoghurt from a kiosk on main street. 

“Oh, I see better without them.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, medically speaking,” César peers at him, his expression uncharacteristically bright with interest. “Jesus, do they still bleed? Is that what that is all over your face?”

Kevin laughs. “Oh, that’s not my blood, silly.”

“You’re creepy as fuck,” César tells him. “I don’t know why I can’t stop thinking about you. Are _you_ doing that?”

“No, why on earth would I?” They pause to watch the yellow helicopters chasing down a group of escapee factory workers in Misty Glades Park. Kevin glances down at his watch. “Oh, look at that, I have to get back to work! How the daily thirty-minute break flies by, more than generous though it is.”

“Yeah,” César says absently. “Listen, can I come by your place later?”

“During mandated sleeping time?” Kevin licks at his frozen treat, digging his tongue into its centre. “What for, César?”

“You know what for.”

Kevin blinks slowly. César is looking at him and now his face is doing something different than it was a moment before – what is it like, he wonders, to feel such extremes of emotion and to move so quickly between moods? Is it tiring?

“I want to fuck you,” he says. “Or, Jesus, I don’t even know – something. I want to do something so obscene to you it hasn’t even been invented yet.”

“Oh,” says Kevin, laughing gaily. “Oh, but I wouldn’t fuck a disgustingly unproductive slob like _you_.” He wags a finger between their fro-yo cups. “This has been super fun, though, thank-you!”

“Wait,” César says, reaching out and catching Kevin by his belt loop. He leans in for a hard, urgent kiss that is more teeth than lip, then he starts back spitting and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “What flavour is that?”

Kevin looks down at the tub in his hand. “Oh, lamb’s liver. My favourite – why, what did you get?”


	2. Chapter 2

Kevin is undressing that night when his phone pings twice in quick succession. Two messages from ‘Lazy Doctor Pervert’, as Kevin has him saved in his contacts. The first message is a link to a video of an adorable cat wearing a shark costume and riding a Roomba; Kevin makes an involuntary chirrup of delight and sends back a complicated emoticon of a sun blowing a kiss to a group of children holding hands in a ring around a sinister edifice. The second is a close-up picture of an erect penis; towards the bottom of the frame he can see a hand pushing a stomach out of the way, thick, widespread fingers make indentations in the generous flesh as if it is bread dough. “This is how u left me 2day,” reads the caption. 

“You really need to work on lighting and composition,” Kevin texts back. Just after he hits ‘send’, his phone rings in his hand. He sighs and answers it. “What?”

César chuckles breathlessly down the phone. “You love it, I know you do. Love to make me want you so bad.” There is noise in the background, the giggles and roars of drunken conversation.

“If you were a biomachine I’d say you need your brain rebooted.”

“What are you wearing?”

“Appropriate branded sleepwear.”

“Cotton, silk?”

“Polyester blend.”

“Oh, _baby_.”

“What is it you want, César?”

“Apart from the obvious? Well, my car is in the shop – something about how cars need oil and regular servicing and blah blah – and tomorrow I have to go to the main lab downtown. So I got management to look into your day planner and it turns out there’s twenty three minutes of your day you weren’t really using. So now it’s your ‘drive César to work’ time. Won’t that be fun?”

“So fun!” Kevin agrees through gritted teeth. 

“Gonna leave you a key under the mat, ok? So just come on up and get me. Sweet dreams, gorgeous.”

*~*~*

When Kevin arrives at the apartment the next day he finds the key carelessly discarded where César said it would be. The building itself is surprisingly modern and well-maintained (StrexCorp’s taste, rather than César’s, Kevin assumes). The apartment he lets himself into is colourless and too dry. In this block, the bloodwork is hidden in the interstices between the walls, giving the building the right feel, if not the aesthetic Kevin himself prefers. 

He calls out in greeting a number of times, but there is no sound except for the quiet, regular rumble of the air conditioning. He ventures further into the apartment, taking in a kitchenette (unused), a clothes and magazine-strewn living room, before coming to the bedroom. The blinds are open, letting in the perpetual glare that makes everything seem faintly transparent. The room is dominated by a king-sized iron-framed bed draped in crumpled white linen. César is sprawled naked across it on his stomach in an attitude of infantile majesty. His skin is a uniform bronze that has a soft, dewy look, except for where silvery stretch marks warp and marble it around the tops of his thighs and his stomach. Kevin feels that swelling, choking outrage again because _look at him_ – an allegorical representation of gluttony, sloth, lust and probably every other sin against society; a one man morality play. It’s so horrible Kevin can’t stop staring – can’t stop thinking about how far his fingertips would sink into that criminally abundant flesh.

“Hey César!” he snaps in an aggressively perky tone. “Rise and shine, Doctor Do-nothing!” When several repetitions have no effect, Kevin gingerly raises one foot and plants the toe of his shoe where he imagines César’s ribs to be, then pushes and twists.

César yelps and rolls over onto his back, slurring curses in Spanish. He blinks and rubs his eyes. “Jesus, what time is it?”

“Eight-THIRTY.”

“Fuck!” He gives a heartfelt groan and sits up on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, silver-striped hair standing up in tufts. “I kinda over-did it last night. Shelley who does the reiki knows how to make this lethal cocktail she calls a ‘Chi-tastrophe’–”

“I am going to be LATE. I have never been late. Never.”

“Alright, alright,” César heaves himself off the bed. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch. What would the smiling god do?”

Kevin’s smile broadens. “Why, obliterate you in an ecstasy of pure, unbearable brightness.”

“Yeah, _super_. Look, if you want this to go faster you’d better dial down the pep and put some coffee on.”

As César disappears into what is presumably a bathroom, Kevin tries to make his displeasure known by making the coffee poorly, but finds he can’t bring himself to do it. It’s surely bad enough he has to be around such a woefully imperfect person without allowing César to tarnish his work ethic.

César sings in the shower, that rich, slightly wonky tenor: “ _It’s a Barnum and Bailey world, just as phoney as it can be – but it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me!_ ”

A coffee cup shatters in Kevin’s hand. At least the blood spatter brightens up the place, and gives Kevin’s pants the little zshushing-up they needed.

*~*~*

“Late late late,” Kevin is murmuring to himself with nursery rhyme brightness and inanity, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as they go.

César doesn’t let this discourage him from making conversation; he tells a story about last night’s party with his staff. To Kevin this seems little more than a stream of pointless and random actions: drink, laugh, play games where no-one wins or even dies. 

“It’s a kind of team-building exercise,” César explains with a benevolent wave of his hand. “You like team-building, right?”

“It sounds nothing like team-building. You had the same number of people at the end of the night as at the start. Oh my, just look at this traffic. This is what happens when people leave it to the last minute to go to work instead of staggering their journeys according to the company-mandated timetable.”

“Well, there you go – now you have today’s editorial. Every cloud has a silver lining.”

“Don’t even talk to me about clouds. I don’t know what business they have getting between us and the sun. Who do they think they are?”

César laughs and shakes his head. “God, you’re weird. It’s a good thing you’re smokin’ hot.”

“Am I?” Kevin tilts his head to the side thoughtfully. 

“Yeah, or at least I think so – God help me. I keep having these weird trances where I find myself making notes about how beautiful your skin looks. My phone’s fucking full of shit like ‘Reminder: Kev’s throat is milk chocolate, speckled like a sparrow’s egg.’ That’s creepy, right? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a sparrow’s egg.”

“They taste gamier than quail. The secret is to leave the shell on – it adds texture.”

“Uh-huh. Remind me to never let you cook dinner.”

“Oh I won’t be having dinner,” Kevin narrows his eye-holes at the slow-moving traffic. “Not at this rate, anyhow.” 

“Here, gimme that day planner.” Before Kevin can take one hand off the wheel to stop him, César grabs Kevin’s the electronic organizer out of the top pocket of his jacket.

“That’s StrexCorp property, César! Penalties for interfering with the device include the immediate termination of your employment and/or life.”

“Yeah, yeah. There, look, I shifted things around a little. Now some intern called Justin is covering your... whatever ‘morning ululations’ are.”

“Justin is _dead_ , silly.” 

“Well, that’ll make it extra hard for him to get into trouble, right?” 

“Who would even give someone like you the override codes?”

César chuckles and pats Kevin’s knee. “Nobody ever _gave_ me anything, baby. If I want something I get proactive. Here, pull up on the left – this is my stop.”

Kevin pulls over to the curb and yanks up the handbrake. César continues to sit and now his face is doing something Kevin can’t quite read. His eyes are twinkling and creased at the corners. He can see some of César’s teeth, but not all of them. Is that fear? Boredom?

“What are you waiting for?” he asks.

“For you to give me a kiss goodbye.” César taps the corner of his mouth. “Just plant it right here, baby. Nice and slow for a count of five-Mississippi.”

“Why on earth would I do that?” 

César stretches luxuriously. “Wow, sure is getting later, huh? If only there was some way to make me get out of your car.”

Kevin watches his own hands clenching and unclenching on the wheel, watching the flesh around his knuckles white-out with the pressure. He thinks of that disgusting display earlier in the under-decorated apartment. He does not want to be in direct contact with all that lazy softness, he feels certain it will contaminate him.

“Hey now, I won’t bite – I promise. Not unless you’re into that.”

Kevin turns his head, his smile falters and César takes this as an invitation to lean in and touch their lips together. He makes a humming sound of enjoyment against Kevin’s mouth, and a hand comes up to touch his jaw, thumb stroking idly against the mole under Kevin’s bottom lip. Trust him to zero in on an imperfection.

“Mmm,” he says when the long moment of the kiss breaks. “That sure tasted a lot better than the last one.”

César’s voice seems to come from very far away. Kevin blinks and is surprised to find the other man’s face still only inches from his own. César plants another too-soft kiss on his cheek and nuzzles him, stubble tickling and scraping. “Thanks for the ride, hot stuff. Guess I’ll hear from you later.” 

He opens the door and steps out onto the pavement, slamming the door and startling Kevin out of his trance-like state. Before he can put the car back in gear, César leans one arm on the open window as if to stay him. “Oh yeah, and I meant to tell you – I’m leaving town for a couple of days after this big pow-wow. So, you know, don’t come around my apartment crying and begging for my cock.”

“Leaving town?” Kevin blinks at him in incomprehension. “Why would anyone want to do that?”

“I know, hard to believe anyone would want a break from all this relentless, searing sunshine, huh? It’s only for a little while though. I thought we’d grab dinner on Saturday night when I get back – you like Thai?”

“Why is it so difficult for you to understand that we are not dating?” 

César shrugs. “So what, Italian?”

Kevin sighs. “I don’t think you listen to me, sometimes.” 

“I always listen to you, sweet thing. I mean, it’s not like I have a choice – the office radios are solar-powered and they don’t have off switches. You stay feisty until I get back, you hear?” César blows him a kiss through the window before he goes and Kevin accidentally puts the car into reverse and it stalls.

He arrives at work to find Daniel berating Justin’s spinal column and the bottom half of his jaw. 

*~*~*

Kevin is getting ready for bed that evening and as he removes a new pair of pajamas from the bottom drawer of the chest a scrap of coloured something catches his eye, stuck in the gap between the bottom and back panels. He carefully extracts it and holds it up to the light. A photograph – a real one, not a print out of a digital image. It shows a young man and woman, perhaps in their early twenties. The former’s arm is slung around the neck of the latter and they are both smiling. At least, Kevin thinks those are smiles: their mouths aren’t stretched widely enough for him to be sure. They look as if they are feeling something, but he can’t put his finger on what. The picture makes him uncomfortable, though again he can’t quite say why that is. They’re just strangers – maybe they lived in the apartment before him (did it come already furnished?). He can’t remember when he moved in, where or if there was another place he called home. He places the photo face down on his windowsill and looks down at the street. The night workers are going on shift, exiting their homes in neat, orderly rows like little wooden figures from a medieval town clock. Quaint how they still call them ‘night’ workers, he thinks.

It is Kevin’s time to sleep – it says so right in his day planner – yet when he lies down he feels strangely restless. His mind keeps drifting back to the man and the woman in the photo – their human, imperfect eyes. Like César’s eyes, they probably contain spiderwebs of red veins. 

He wonders where César is, and who he’s currently forcing his company on. Kevin wants suddenly to hear a voice, to be taken out of this pointless mental churning over the picture. It takes a couple of tries to get the line to connect, but on the fourth try Kevin hears a ringing tone instead of a series of mysterious clicks and roaring static. 

“Hey sexy, what’s up?” 

“I don’t know. I can’t sleep, and I thought maybe you would be awake.”

“Sure am.”

“What’s it like where you are?”

“Well, it’s nighttime here. It’s cool and dark and the sky is full of stars. I’m out on the porch steps and there’s a breeze on my skin – feels real good.”

“I remember now,” Kevin murmurs vaguely. He hears laughter in the background. “Who’s that with you?”

“That’s Sophia, my little girl.”

“I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

“Yeah. I’m not with her mom anymore, and I don’t get to see her much.”

“Oh, then I’m keeping you from your family.” The word ‘family’ feels strange in Kevin’s mouth and it makes his brain do that uncomfortable tic, like a CD skipping. 

“She’s just watching some dumb cartoon. I think it’s way more interesting than her crusty old dad, you know?” César lets out a groan as he lowers himself onto one of the porch steps. “So what’s new in the Bluffs?”

Kevin gives him the highlights of the show that day. It’s strange – talking to just one person, a person who talks back and laughs. Kevin doesn’t have any friends and he can’t remember if he ever did. Vanessa, he thinks. Is Vanessa still alive? It seems like he saw her just this morning; he remembers her bouncing curls and the way she made faces at him through the glass, when there was glass.

When Kevin says he should go, César chuckles and murmurs, “well alright baby, call me if you feel lonely again – or any other kind of urge.” 

“I’m not _lonely_. Loneliness is for people who have holes in their lives they are not filling with enough daily tasks.”

“If you say so. I’ll pick you up on my way into town, ok? Wear something that’ll look good on my bedroom floor.”

*~*~* 

Kevin is dressing the next day and he hasn’t opened the curtains yet, so the light in the room is dim and hazy. He has just pulled his undershirt on when he catches sight of himself in the mirror. He doesn’t usually look at his body – he likes clothes in bright colours and interesting textures, and he enjoys decorating himself with streaks of red. His naked flesh never seems quite right: it’s soft and generous and where he wants it to be functional and unyielding. His thighs are thick and dimpled; his stomach is stubbornly convex; his ass is rounded and feminine. He doesn’t feel anxiety or self-loathing (he doesn’t feel much of anything, really), but it puzzles him – it seems like a mismatch. 

In the filtered light it is almost as if he is gazing at a stranger. His penis is soft and he strokes it idly with one hand and feels it stir. He brings his hand up and runs it around the hem of the undershirt, turns his body side-on to the mirror. His phone is on the bedside table and at first he thinks he will just take the picture to look at it with the objectiveness of the camera’s eye. He likes it, a shot of his torso down to just above his knees. It’s almost anonymous.

Forty minutes later – just as he has arrived at the studio – the phone rings. “Jesus fucking Christ, Kevin! I was driving when I got that text. I almost wrapped the car around a tree.”

“Oh dear,” Kevin says mildly. “I hope you’re not still behind the wheel. Multitasking is commendable in most circumstances but–”

“I’m on a bed with my pants around my ankles and my dick in my hand, so start talking.”

“I’m at _work_ , César.” Kevin sticks his head through the doorway and looks left and right down the corridor. He can see the shadows of his coworkers behind the break-room window, so they must be still in the middle of their daily offerings.

“So, don’t you have bathrooms or supply closets?”

“I’m not going to slack off to talk filthy nonsense to you.” 

“Then listen, and I’ll talk. You know what that picture did to me? Can you hear that, how rough I’m being with myself? Fuck, Kevin, you make me crazy. You make me so desperate for it. I wish you were here right now, in this shitty motel with me, on your knees on the cigarette-burned carpet. Would you kiss it for me, baby? Would you put your tongue out and lap at my dick like it’s a fucking frozen dessert?”

Kevin hears himself make a high, odd sound. He closes the door with a soft click and and presses himself against the studio wall, then he lets out a breath. “Yes,” he murmurs.

Just that simple admission makes César groan. “Oh, baby. I’d want to look at your mouth, where you’d be stretched around me, but I’d also want to see your back and your ass in the mirror on the back of the door. I’d want to squeeze and smack it, watch it jiggle under the strokes... to see my handprints coming up on your flesh. Would you like that, Kevin? Would you moan for me, right around my dick?”

“Yes,” Kevin whispers, swallowing thickly. 

“If you were a good boy for me, I’d get my finger really wet and slide it into your ass. Bet you’re tight, aren’t you? But you’d love it, my thick finger right inside you like that. You’d look so fucking gorgeous filled from both ends.”

Kevin has his hand pressed tightly over his crotch, as if that can stop the strange, alien throbbing and heat. He can hear the sound of flesh slapping and laboured breathing. 

“Fuck, I’m so close. Ah, Kevin, unhh–” César’s commentary breaks off into gasps and groans that make it sound like he’s dying. Then for a long moment all Kevin can hear is harsh panting, before César gives a hoarse chuckle. “Jesus, I’m forty years old and you just made me cum all over myself like a horny teenager. Are you touching yourself, baby?”

“No, I’m... I can’t, César. My coworkers are just down the hall!”

“Who gives a fuck about your stupid robot pals? Get your hand in your pants and give yourself what you need.” 

“I don’t need it. It’s not at all productive, César.”

“That’s the _point_ , you stupid bastard. When you’re touching yourself that’s just for you. Doesn’t cost anything, doesn’t create anything, doesn’t require any resources except your own filthy imagination! Jerking off is free – it’s the great equalizer.”

“Wow, that was super-inspiring,” Kevin says. “You should embroider it on pillows. Then you can give those pillows away free in your socialist dreamworld where nobody has to do any work.”

“Fine, see if I care that you have to walk around with blue balls. Maybe I prefer it that way, knowing how hot you’ll be for me tonight on our date.”

“We are not dating, César. I do not have time for dates. It says so in my schedule.”

This just makes César chuckle. “Yeah, why don’t you check again? Until tonight, baby.”

Kevin hangs up and – with a mounting sense of fatalism – pulls out his organizer, scrolling right across the screen with a flick of his thumb. A bright yellow block of time stretching impossibly from 8 PM to 8 AM reads ‘date with Dr. César’. Below is a bullet-pointed to-do list: ‘eat, drink, kiss, 3 sex acts of ur choice (list on application)’. 

Kevin bangs the back of his head against the wall and smiles until the frustration dissipates. It takes much longer than usual.


	3. Chapter 3

The blare of a car horn rouses Kevin from his laptop screen. As it continues in long, relentless blasts, curiosity draws him to the office window. César is standing in the radio station parking lot, leaning against the open driver’s door of his rust-bucket car. He waves jauntily when he sees Kevin appear at the window. In one arm, cradled like a child, he holds a bouquet of sunflowers. He grins at Kevin, holds up his wrist and taps the face of a gaudy gold watch. Kevin smiles and signals back with one raised middle-finger. 

The office clock reads eight-fifteen and his day planner is vibrating angrily in his pocket. Kevin contemplates shutting the blinds and putting in earplugs, but the door opens and Daniel enters.

“Worker Kevin, why are you still on the premises? Your shift ended fifteen minutes and thirty three seconds ago.”

“I still have work to do.”

“We all have work to do. It is the nature of work that it is endless and ever-present. StrexCorp organizes the lives of its employees into meaningful blocks so we know which tasks to perform at which times. Your shift finished fifteen minutes and fifty seconds ago, please exit the premises and begin your next task. If you are unsure which task you are currently allotted, press ‘menu’ on your personal organizer, followed by ‘view today’. If your organizer is malfunctioning, call twenty-four hour tech support on 0800–”

“Alright!” Kevin replies, hitching his reporter’s satchel onto his shoulder. “I’m going. I’m going right now!”

*~*~*

“Hey baby!” César calls to him brightly from across the parking lot. Kevin’s organizer finally stops it’s ribcage-rattling buzzing, though he has no idea how it knows he has given in.

César drives him downtown to a restaurant that has recreated the experience of eating in an old family-run trattoria: the tables are spray painted with a checkered pattern and electronic candles flicker in replica Chianti bottles. For the customer’s entertainment, the biomachine servers have even been programmed to yell at each other in a thick Sicilian dialect. 

Instead of sitting opposite him in the booth, César slides onto the banquette seat next to him and slings an arm around his shoulder. He smells like cheap cologne and fresh sweat and Kevin can feel the dampness seep through his own shirt. He orders two beers before they even get their menus, then nudges Kevin and grins, adding: “and whatever he wants, I guess.”

“Ugggh,” he says, when their server leaves them with their drinks. “I have had a long, shitty day, baby – that whole reentry interrogation deal never gets any easier. Still, worth it just to see my little girl for a few days.” 

“Do you have a picture of your daughter?” Kevin asks, though he’s not sure why he’s even curious. 

“You want to see my Soph?” César fumbles his phone out of his pants pocket and flips through some photo albums before turning the screen towards Kevin. “Here she is. She’s cute as a button, huh?”

Kevin looks at the picture and sees a girl of around eight years old. Her skin is fairer than César’s and her hair falls in untidy, brassy curls. He takes in the girl’s sprawling posture and her expression – her face is turned away, her eyes closed and mouth open. 

Kevin doesn’t know what the face in the picture means, but some voice at the back of his head – a voice that doesn’t always sound like his own – is saying that it’s faulty and imperfect. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She hates having her picture taken,” César explains. “The flash scares her sometimes.”

“But what’s _wrong_ with her?”

César’s body stiffens against his for a moment. “She's autistic. You know what that means?”

Kevin nods.

He sighs. “It’s real tough on her mom. She doesn’t get time off, except when I get time off, you know? And as Soph gets bigger, it gets a little harder every day.”

“Do you love her?”

“Do I love my daughter? Of course I fucking do! Jesus, Kevin, what kind of question is that?”

“It must be a lot of trouble,” Kevin says, aware as he does so that César won’t understand his question. What he means is: why would you bother to love someone who can’t reward you for it? How do you trust someone who doesn’t have a job description?

“Sure, all kids are,” Cesar turns the beer bottle around on the table with one hand, leaving behind ring-shaped marks of condensation. “I didn’t... she wasn’t exactly planned, you know? Her mom’s a little older than me, and when she got pregnant she figured it was her last chance and might as well take it. I wasn’t too happy about that. I never wanted to be a dad.”

“Why not?”

“I never knew my old man, and Jesus, what do I know about taking care of anyone?”

“You’re a doctor.”

“I’m a grifter, Kev.” He takes a swig of his drink and stares off into the middle distance. After a long moment he continues: “all the clichés about babies are true, though – someone puts this screaming little pink thing in your arms and tells you its yours and you go all soft in the head. I’d do fucking anything just to make her happy. That’s how come I’m here in the Bluffs in first place – earn money so her mom can get her into a school where they can take care of her better.”

“Why don’t you bring her here? The doctors – the _real_ doctors – could fix her.”

César stares at him. “You think the doctors here could rewire someone’s brain? Like it’s a fucking TV or a lamp?” 

The way he says it, it doesn’t sound like he thinks this is a good idea. Kevin is frustrated – he wishes he could make César understand how wonderful it is to have your imperfections taken out and to be still and empty, so you’re ready to be filled with all that bright, cold light.

“Believe me,” César continues, lowering his voice, “the kind of fixing they do here is not what you want for someone you love. I’ve done some fucked-up stuff in my time, but this place... You know, I sell distilled water to people who have cancer and tell them it’s a miracle cure – but in a place like this, I figure that’s doing them a fucking _favour_.” César sighs and squeezes Kevin’s shoulder. “Ah, I shouldn’t be talking to anyone about this, least of all you.” 

“You certainly should not be talking like this to me. Maybe a blow-in like you wouldn’t understand, but some of us actually have some civic pride!”

“Sure, sorry – I didn’t mean to... I just had a rough day. Forget about it, baby – I just wanna show you a good time, tonight, ok? Anywhere you wanna go, anything you wanna do, just tell me.”

“What I want is to go home.”

“Right now?”

Kevin nods decisively. “I’m not hungry.”

“Well alright then,” César slides out of the booth and throws down money for the beers. “Let’s move this to your place.” 

*~*~*

When they get to Kevin’s apartment, César pulls the car into the underground parking garage and follows him out to the elevator, one hand on Kevin’s hip and the other clutching that absurd bouquet. Kevin doesn’t know why he isn’t telling César to go away, that he has work to do and he needs to be alone. There is something infectious about César’s confidence; his unshakeable belief that Kevin wants him there. 

“You got a vase? César asks when they reach the kitchen.

“I don’t know,” Kevin’s gaze darts around the room before a flash of intuition sends him to look in the cabinet above the sink and he finds a large enamel jug that seems like it would do just as well. He fills it with water and brings it back to the kitchen island. César unwraps the brown paper from around the sunflowers and places their stems into the water. The flowers fall in an outward spiral, their heavy yellow heads bobbing and swaying.

“Pretty, huh? A guy was selling them by the road. Made me think of you - how they’re all cheery around the outside of a big, black hole.”

“That’s... rather lovely, actually,” Kevin admits. He turns to find César has boxed him in with his hands, which are spread wide on the counter. César is all of five and a half feet, but his square, upright stance makes him seem taller. 

“Hey, c’mere a minute. You know you haven’t even kissed me hello yet?” he steps closer, crowding Kevin against the cool marble. As César leans in Kevin catches glances of him in parts: a pudgy, thick-fingered hand leaving a smear on his countertop; the button that has come undone on his shirt; the crooked incisor that always mars his golden smile. The kiss when it comes is warm and wet and César is squeezing him tight enough that he feels faintly delirious. Kevin grasps at his broad, sweat-damp back and pushes against him, loving the warmth and the solidity of him. That rushing, pooling heat between his legs returns, more rapid this time – he hopes he doesn’t have to bang his head on the wall again to make it dissipate; he suspects he’s still mildly concussed from earlier. 

When César rolls his hips against him, Kevin hears a high, pathetic whine and realises he is the one making it. Breaking the kiss, César laughs, a low, breathless sound, and presses some soft, sloppy kisses to the crook of Kevin’s neck. “Is this ok?” he asks, looking up at him from under his brows. “I’ve been told I come on too strong, sometimes. But I just think when you want someone – and you’re pretty fucking sure they want you too – what’s the point in waiting? All that lingering-glance-in-the-parlor, Jane Austen shit was never my style.”

“How did you know that I wanted you?” 

“Right now your dick’s burning a hole in my thigh, Kev – not exactly subtle.” 

“No, before – at the start. How did you know?”

“All that intense staring and biting your lip? Figured you either wanted to fuck me or eat me.”

“But you’re so lazy and disgusting,” Kevin whines. 

César chuckles against his throat. “Doesn’t stop you getting hard for me, does it?” He makes a hissing sound as he rubs Kevin through the front of his blood-stained chinos. “You’re so hot for it, baby, come on – let me take you to bed before you make even more of a mess of those pants.”

*~*~*

In the bedroom, César strips off his clothes clumsily while still trying to kiss Kevin, meaning that Kevin ends up with saliva all along his cheek and some in his ear.

“Come on already,” César hisses as Kevin drops his pants and shrugs out of his shirt. “Oh Jesus, don’t stop to _fold_ them, you fucking maniac.”

Kevin turns – and it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, but the mark across César’s stomach where his belt was digging in; the whorls of dark body hair on his thighs; his hands trailing over all Kevin’s body each time an article of shed clothing leaves a new patch bare – there’s something too intimate and real about it all. 

Kevin doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows in some intuitive way that he’s had lovers in the past, but he can’t grasp firmly onto any of his memories of them or what they did together. He can’t even remember the last time he touched himself. Maybe he doesn’t – maybe that part of him got scraped out too, along with everything else that was unnecessary.

“C’mere,” César says, steering him towards the end of the bed. Kevin sits down heavily, like one of the older, clunkier biomachines. “You ok? You look kinda spaced out.”

Kevin nods, though privately he is still wondering at the strangeness of the situation – why he still isn’t telling César to leave, but instead catering to his perverted whims. César smiles at him and rubs his bare chest with one hand, then leans in to kiss him again – with a lot more accuracy this time. 

“Lie back,” he urges, hand wandering down Kevin’s inner thigh, “that’s it. Hey, you like assplay? Cause right now I just can’t wait to get my fingers in you, open you up real good – that sound good to you, baby?”

Kevin’s mind blanks out for a long moment, his mouth works as he tries to form words to reply to such an obscene question. César takes the lull in conversation as opportunity to kneel down and suck on the end of Kevin’s dick, making a humming sound of appreciation before pulling off with a slick sound. His fingertips have insinuated their way between Kevin’s ass cheeks and are pressing in a wide circle that makes him see sparks behind his eyelids.

“Yes,” Kevin says, although he has forgotten what the question was. “Yes.”

“Fuck, baby,” César pants against Kevin’s stomach, bites his hipbone, “I need you so bad. You got any lube so we can get this party started?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin says, blinking at the ceiling. “Where would be the appropriate place to keep that?” he wonders aloud to himself. “The refrigerator, maybe, or the linen closet? I’ll go check if you want.”

“God, you’re weird. Don’t worry, I have emergency supplies.”

Kevin hears the grunt of César rising to his feet. He stares at the ceiling and watches the other man’s shadow moving across it in a distorted, elongated form. There is the rustling of fabric, and then the touch of a warm hand on Kevin’s thigh startles him from his reverie; it slides along to his knee and down his calf, then grasps his ankle and hitches it up onto César’s shoulder. The process is repeated with the other foot and Kevin wriggles as if that will diminish the sense of exposure. 

“Like that, baby, let me see you. Fuck, you’re so gorgeous.”

Kevin raises his head and watches Cesar biting open the corner of a plastic sachet and squeezing the clear gel out onto his fingers. Although it was obvious what was going to happen next, the slippery intrusion is startling in ways Kevin can’t immediately process. César keeps doing it and Kevin keeps letting him, gasping and clenching the bed linen between his fingers until it tears. 

“Am I hurting you?”

“Yes – ah, it hurts! It’s _perfect_.”

“Oh, it’s like _that_ , is it?” César is using that voice he had on on the phone, the one that is low and filthy and amused. “You’re a mouthy little sub, aren’t you? Love to complain as you take it.”

“No,” Kevin groans, pushing back against César’s fingers. “Ugh I hate it, it’s _terrible_ – don’t stop.”

“Uh huh. C’mon, spread a little wider for me, baby. You know what you look like right now? Your thighs are trembling you want it so bad. Want me to give it to you, don’t you?”

“No, no, I hate you, you’re so disgusting–” Kevin actually sobs, a strange wrenching sound coming up from his diaphragm. His face is burning and he has to turn it aside so it’s in the deep pool of shadow cast by César’s body. 

“Mm-hm, greedy cockslut. I should make you beg for it.” 

There is a high whine in Kevin’s head that’s like microphone feedback and César’s voice seems to be coming from a place that is far away, or with a muted quality like it’s being heard through water. He pulls out his fingers and gives Kevin a sharp smack where the back of his thigh joins his ass.

“Stay where you are, now.”

Kevin looks down between his own widespread thighs and watches César roll on a condom. His dick is like the rest of him: squat and thick and not very aesthetically pleasing; Kevin has seen it so many times in photographs it’s almost disorientating to see it in the flesh, like meeting a C-list celebrity. 

“That’s right,” César purrs, stroking it and making the latex ripple, “this is what you’re getting.”

Kevin groans as César pushes in, his spine arching taut like a bow string. The slipperiness and heat and pressure create a feeling that is indescribable – something hateful and wrong that he somehow can’t stop tilting his hips up for more of as César finally starts to fuck him. César’s flesh sticks to him in strange places and pulls away like a band-aid; a bead of perspiration rolls off his forehead and splashes on Kevin’s collarbone, and he shudders in lust and revulsion.

“You’re close, aren’t you?” César grunts, throwing his weight behind the thrusts. “Touch yourself – go on, put that prissy hand around your dick and tug yourself off.”

“No no, I can’t – you do it.”

César scrapes his stubble against Kevin’s ankle. “Do it. I want to see it.”

Kevin’s fingers trail down his stomach and flutter uselessly in the patch of wiry hair around the base of his shaft.

“Go on,” César urges. “Or are you lazy? Show me you can jack it like a little efficient fucking worker.”

Kevin has no finesse when it comes to this – it’s like the movements to a half-forgotten dance. He flexes his fingers and releases them, gasping at the sensation of _too much-not enough_. 

“That’s right.” César places his own hand on top and squeezes, pushing Kevin’s upwards and dragging it back down again. “Just like that. Come on, come on – _unh_ – fuck you’re tight.”

César closes his eyes and tilts his head back, letting out a deep, ragged groan; sweat glimmers on his chest and his upper lip. His hips lose their coordination and go into jagged, spasmodic rhythm. Kevin touches himself and squirms around the intrusion, then makes a number of weird, involuntary noises and comes all over himself. Seconds later, César shudders and slumps on him to a profane coda of “jesuschrist _fuck_!” 

For a long moment there is only harsh panting and the weight of a body pressed against his, then it disappears. The next thing Kevin knows is the feeling of a warm, wet cloth on his stomach, and then between his legs; a sensation like the rasp like a cat’s tongue to his over-sensitized skin. He dimly realizes that it is his washcloth (meant for his face, and not for cleaning up unspeakable bodily fluids) but this newest atrocity of sloppiness committed by César can’t raise anything even approaching annoyance in Kevin. He manages to push himself further up the bed before flopping down on his back again, his arm slung over his eyes. He hears César say: “aw, did I break you, baby?”

“Shut up,” he murmurs hoarsely. His hair is sticking to his forehead and the room is permeated with a miasma of sex, body odour and the faint industrial smell of the lubricant. He still can’t bring himself to care.

He feels the bed dip and then a shadow falling across him, followed by the pressure of César’s lips on his cheek. Then he ebbs away into nothing – a warm, heavy dreamlessness.

*~*~*

Kevin wakes to the a delicious smell of fresh dough and the feeling of the breeze on his skin. He sits up against the headboard and blinks, rubbing his eye sockets. He raises his head and sees that the window is open, but César is nowhere in sight. From down the hall he can hear the sound of a TV and, curious, he slips out of bed and pulls on a light robe. He finds César sitting naked on his sofa, a pizza box open on the coffee table in front of him as he gazes at the screen. He’s watching a telenovella: in a cardboard-looking hospital room a woman in a scarlet, rhinestoned dress is beating the chest of a mustachioed man and shrieking imprecations in Spanish.

“Hmm?” Kevin says. “What time is it?”

César looks up. “Just after ten. You went out like a light, sweet thing. How are you feeling?” He gives a crooked smile. “A little sore?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, César.”

César throws his head back and laughs, showing all his fillings. “Oh, that’s how it is, huh? Well I saved you some pizza, but now I’m reconsidering my generosity.”

“What topping?”

“Anchovy.”

“Regular or incorporeal?”

“Uh, regular. I hope.”

Kevin lowers himself (a little gingerly) onto the sofa and leans forward to grab a still-warm slice. He still feels a little light-headed and out of it, but his stomach tells him he is ravenous, and the first bite almost makes him groan at the burst of intense savoriness.

“Did you answer the door like that?” Kevin asks after he has swallowed several mouthfuls and can turn his attention to gnawing on the crust.

“It’s not like it’s the worst thing a Desert Bluffs delivery guy has ever seen.”

“Mmm,” Kevin oscillates his wrist in a gesture of doubt.

“You people. If my organs were outside my body it would be fine and dandy.” César crosses his legs, hitching one ankle up on his opposite knee. “So that’s how you eat, huh? That’s... well, have you always had so many non-standard teeth at the back there?”

“My dentist says they’re perfect. They do take a lot of brushing, but oral hygiene is very important.”

“Uh huh. You want some soda, or does your dentist not approve of that?”

“I only drink tap water.”

“Shit, Kev, you know what they put in that stuff here? No wonder you’re so spaced out all the time.”

“Don’t call me ‘Kev’.” 

César smiles at him fondly and reaches over to rub his back. “Seems like we did this backwards, huh? I mean, the dinner and fucking parts. I like it this way though, I can concentrate better when some of my blood is in my brain and not being diverted to my dick.”

“Oh César,” Kevin says as he finishes wolfing down a second slice, “why, I didn’t know you were a _romantic_.”

“Ha ha. Come on, you want to get domestic and watch a little TV with me?”

“I think I only took Weird Spanish at school.”

“What’s Weird Spanish?”

“It’s what the dead conquistadors speak. Don’t you even know your own history?”

The information seems to amuse César. “I guess not.” He turns down the set’s volume until it’s just a soft murmur, like the wash of the sea on a shore. “C’mere,” he says, holding up one arm. 

“What for?”

“You got something against cuddling?”

Kevin doesn’t know whether he is cuddling-averse or not, but he decides to give it a try. He ends up leaning sideways against César’s chest, a heavy arm draped across his waist and light, tickling fingertips skating up and down his spine through the layer of thin cotton. César narrates the story for him: “Maria is having an affair with Juan, but Juan started trying to seduce Maria’s sister, Milagro. Milagro only has eyes for Maria’s millionaire husband Sergio, so in revenge, Maria pushed him down some stairs and made it look like an accident. Milagro’s not buying it, but Sergio is still in a coma and can’t testify. My money’s on an amnesia plot twist.”

When the narrative lingers on an extended slap-fight between the sisters, César yawns and rubs the back of Kevin’s head in slow circles. 

“Your hair is so soft - how do you even get it like that?”

“It’s called a Brazilian Blowout.”

“Yeah?” César chuckles, and from Kevin’s perspective with an ear against his chest it sounds like the echoes of an elder god awakening in a cave. “I’ve got a Colombian blow-something I could give you.”

“Don’t be disgusting.”

“I just think it’s funny – that you’re all work-work-maximum-efficiency but you have this big vain streak, too: the hair, the shellac nail job. Sometimes I even think maybe you’re a real person in there, under all the gore.” He makes a humming sound of consideration. “You know, I told Beth about you.”

“Who’s Beth?”

“My ex, the baby-mama.”

“How long were you together?”

“Five years – two of them good.”

“What happened?”

“Soph happened. Got diagnosed when she was about a year and a half, I guess. Beth goes into like some fucking military mode where all there is is the kid and her problems. Then I try to pretend it’s not happening, get a little butthurt there’s no talking, no intimacy anymore – I start drinking too much and playing around. Not my finest moment.”

“What exactly was your finest moment?”

“Hey, shut up – I’m trying to have a heart-to-heart with you here.”

Chastened, Kevin says: “alright, tell the story.” 

César’s fingers resume their hypnotic stroking up and down his spine. He sighs and Kevin feels his whole body dip with it. 

“Sometimes when you break something it can’t be fixed, you know? She said she forgave me, we tried to make a go of it again. The trust wasn’t there, and she was just... sad. Sad I betrayed her, sad I couldn’t pull my head out of my own ass to take care of her and my kid when they needed me. Every time I looked at her I could see in her eyes what a disappointment I was. That’s no way to live a life.”

“What did it look like?” Kevin asks.

“What did what look like, baby?”

“Disappointment. You said you could see it.”

“Oh. Well it’s like a soft look in the eyes, and the eyebrows drawn together. It’s hard to describe, but you sure know it when you see it.” 

“I don’t.”

“You have trouble with faces, huh? Soph has that, too.” César dips his head and kisses Kevin just where his forehead meets his hairline. 

“Why did you tell her about me – your ex?”

“I don’t know. She has some new guy and I guess I’m not beyond being a little jealous. What about you – you got any skeletons in the closet I should know about?”

“You know I always leave any out-of-date organs out for recycling like company policy dictates.”

César laughs. “No, I mean exes. We’re not young – I guess we both have scars to carry around.” 

“Maybe.” Kevin understands this time that the ‘scars’ are metaphorical, but he wishes it were true; that he could see his own history on his skin, or cut himself open and find it etched on his viscera. “I don’t remember.”

After a long moment, César says: “you know, there’s something untouched about you – maybe that’s what drives me crazy. Earlier when we went to bed it was like being with a virgin. In a good way, I mean – you just seemed so surprised by it all.”

“Hm,” Kevin says vaguely. His eyelids are very heavy, he feels like a well-fed newborn on its mother’s chest. 

“Come on, your back won’t thank you tomorrow if you fall asleep here.”

He lets César drag him up and down the hall to the bedroom and help him shuck off the robe. The bed sheets are cool again and they feel divine against his heated skin.

“Hey what’s this?” he hears César ask.

“Hm?”

He feels the mattress shift as César climbs into bed next to him. “When was this taken?”

Kevin opens one eye and sees César has hold of the photograph of the strange couple he found the other day and then abandoned face-down on the windowsill. “Don’t know.”

“Who’s the woman – sister, friend, girlfriend?”

“How should I know? I just found it in a drawer, it’s not mine.”

César gives a soft, disbelieving laugh. “Kev, that’s _you_.”

Kevin struggles to sit up and looks at where César’s thumbnail points. The man in the picture is younger than Kevin and has his hair clipped short, but he has Kevin’s dark skin, and the lines around his eyes are the same. 

His smile is very different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who has commented so far – I had no idea if anyone would like this interpretation or not, so it's all really encouraging. Hope you like the plot (kinda) thickening!


	4. Chapter 4

“Good morning Desert Bluffs! It’s that time again – the Desert Bluffs Radio Incorporated Annual Roadshow is coming up. Did you work extra hard this tax year? Did you put your health and mental well-being at risk for StrexCorp? I sure hope so! And if you did you can expect a visit from yours truly and the team. What could be more exciting, huh? Nothing. If by chance you don’t find yourself giddy with excitement at the prospect of earning the praise of your community’s radio station, then I strongly suggest you report to your Strex-appointed healthcare provider as soon as possible. You may require some readjustment of your medications, or a little break at one of StrexCorp’s luxury rejuvenation camps – and don’t the people who return from those always have such _glowing_ reports? 

“One thing I know for sure is that nobody in such a prosperous, sunny town as Desert Bluffs wants to be a Negative Nelly, right listeners? Of course I’m right!” Kevin chuckles warmly to himself and reaches for the envelope, peeling it carefully off the coagulating surface of his console.

“Well now, here’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The name of the first business to be visited by our show. Oh, so exciting!” The envelope crinkles and tears under Kevin’s blood-encrusted nail. “Congratulations to – The Desert Bluffs Alternative Therapies and Wellness Clinic and Spa. Well, isn’t that a surprise? I’m certainly surprised, given that the team leader of that particular business spent yesterday Snapchatting me pictures of himself glistening and naked on a massage chair. I guess it just goes to show that you can’t judge a book by its lazily-drawn cover. I guess I’ll see you all this afternoon, D.B.A.T.A.W.C.A.S. In the meantime, let’s all work on a better acronym, ok? Email or tweet your suggestions to Intern Vanessa for a chance to be named Busy Brander of the Day!”

*~*~*

When Kevin arrives in the van driven by a new intern (Jack? John?), he finds César waiting out front of the clinic. The so-called doctor has apparently dressed up for the occasion – he is wearing a tie over his crumpled, sweat-darkened shirt. Kevin gives an involuntary shudder of disgust and absolutely does not think of César looming above him, rocking his hips and mouthing ‘baby, _baby_ ’ against Kevin’s throat. Neither does he dwell on the thought that under that hideous shirt César must still have scratch marks all down his back from Kevin’s immaculate manicure. 

He wonders if César has told his coworkers what they did together in bed – if he laughs and brags about it over drinks. Do people do that with their friends? Kevin doesn’t know if he read that somewhere, or saw it on TV, or if somewhere in the past, he had friends he joked with about his sex life. 

César squeezes his shoulder. “So, are we ready to get started? This thing going out live?”

“Ha ha ha! Certainly not, César. I have a feeling you’re going to need a _lot_ of editing to be brought up to company standards.”

“You wound me, Kev. I hope you never know how much.” 

Kevin puts on his widest, most professional smile (the one that makes people flinch) and pulls out his microphone and digital recorder. “Dr. César, how does it feel to be Desert Bluffs Subsidiary Business Concern of the Year?” 

“Oh I was just so thrilled when you read out the name of our humble clinic. Bringing hope and well-being to the citizens of Desert Bluffs is rewarding enough in itself – but to be publicly recognised for our sacrifices... well, it’s almost overwhelming.” César’s voice is cranked up to the correct complaisant tone, but his eyes are still shimmering with unprofessional mischief. 

“And surprising, given that you’ve only been open for a month.”

“What can I say, we must just have wanted it more than the others. _Shame_ on all those others. Now, if you’ll follow me, let’s get this show on the road.”

They walk through a set of automatic doors of frosted glass with a decal of a sun surrounding a group of people holding hands and levitating up out of wheelchairs and beds, to a reception area. Here people sit, grey or white-faced with pain and hopelessness, some whimpering, all of them only faintly perceptible through a fug of incense and the Tibetan hand-bell music being piped in at an aggressively loud volume. A secretary sits cross-legged in the centre of the floor, smiling beatifically as she taps away on a tablet and answers phone calls on her headset in a bright, chirrupy voice: “Desert Bluffs Alternative Therapies and Wellness Clinic and Spa – what is the sound of one lung coughing?”

“That’s Jenna,” César says, gesturing negligently. “She was a starched Strex-drone like you originally, but we’ve made her more our style – well, we hennaed her hair and made her sit on a bean bag... close enough.” 

Kevin shudders at César’s unique ability to pack so much offensiveness into one sentence. “Perhaps we should start in the treatment rooms. You can explain the therapies on offer in more detail to our listeners.”

“Sure. Follow me to the reiki suite. I’m sure Shelley can rattle off some crap about chakras that your deluded listeners would like to hear.”

César leads him to a room painted a blinding Hare Krishna orange and adorned with a confused amalgam of chinese characters and om-symbol squiggles. Shelley is a vague, eccentric-looking woman wrapped in a tie-dye pashmina, her bird’s nest of hair stuck all over with wilting flowers. She is barefoot and her feet are caked with dirt and sand. She tells Kevin he has a beautiful aura and that she is so very glad to see it’s complementary to César’s. 

Next door they find the herbalist Chet curled up under his desk, gibbering and twitching – apparently under the influence of some all-natural hallucinogen. Only acupuncturist Ren, with her shiny, angle-cut bob and crisp, white lab coat, has the clinical neatness that Kevin properly associates with medical practitioners.

“Needles in the eyeballs,” Kevin comments with warm interest and he bends over a writhing patient. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”

“I’m very thorough,” Ren says and in return Kevin gives her a broad, approving smile.

Further down the corridor is the ‘spa’ – in actuality, a tiled room with a few mildewed plastic ferns and a plywood sauna built into the corner, leaking steam at the seams. A pair of disturbingly muscular and near-naked men appear and give Kevin an appraising look.

César gestures proudly. “These are our masseurs, Sven and Björn.”

Looking at them, Kevin cannot discern if they are related, or if it is merely their incongruous paleness and high, nordic features that creates this impression.

“You want us to work him over?” either Sven or Björn asks, rolling his shoulders and cracking his muscle-corded neck.

César puts his hands on his hips and laughs. “I don’t think Kevin is into that.” After a beat he adds, thoughtfully: “but if he is, _I’m_ going to be the one to find out.”

Sven and Björn shrug and go back to doing bicep curls in the corner. There are some hammering and choking sounds coming from the sauna, and only then does Kevin notice that there is a horizontal plank barring the door shut.

“That’s it!” César calls cheerfully. “Just feel those toxins sweating out!” The hammering becomes a sort of resigned scrabbling as César puts his hand against the small of Kevin’s back and guides him towards the next stop on their tour. 

He opens a set of double doors leading into a large, high-windowed room that looks like a Victorian laboratory. There are long tables coated in heavy varnish and old-fashioned chemistry apparatus: cast iron weighing scales, bunsen burners, retort stands and Erlenmeyer flasks. The walls are lined with glass cabinets of tiny bottles and phials filled with clear liquid.

César seats himself in a cracked leather chair that squeaks as he leans back and props his heels on the desk. “Cool, huh?” he gestures expansively. “Some people like all this set dressing, y’know? Reassures them to think some dead, white European dude said it was all sciencey and legit.”

“This is your office?”

“Sure is, hot stuff. Dr. César’s homeopathic laboratory, or as I like to call it, The Bullshitorium.”

“Perhaps,” Kevin suggests, his most professional smile still securely fixed on his face, “you’d like to explain these _very important_ therapies to the listeners?”

César sighs and links his fingers behind his head. “You want the sales patter? Yeah, ok.”

He goes into a long and tortuous explanation of the principles of homeopathy, incorporating folksy wisdoms about how ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ and the historical precedent for using poisonous substances as drugs, before moving on to a cod-scientifical explanation of how the dilution of ingredients actually exponentially increases potency, and how water has a memory. Kevin takes supplementary notes and makes diagrams. As he rises to leave, César scrambles up from his chair and grasps Kevin’s elbow.

“Wait, I haven’t showed you the most important room yet,” César flashes him his golden smile and opens an adjoining door. “After you.”

Kevin steps into a dark room and waits for César to follow, pulling on an overhead cord to flood the small space with light. Kevin stares ahead of him in confusion – taking in folded towels and cleaning fluids.

“It’s a supply closet,” he says, turning to face César in the confined space.

“To the untrained eye, maybe. It’s actually where I do my most important work.” César’s arms wrap around Kevin’s torso, squeezing him like a boa constrictor and pinning his arms against his sides. “So, it’s a completely new kind of treatment I’m calling IMT – intensive make-out therapy.” Kevin leans back and thunks his head against a shelf to avoid the rapidly incoming kiss. César chuckles and kisses his neck and the pulse point behind his ear instead. Kevin expects the familiar prickle of stubble, but he has actually shaved recently, and the softness of his face feels alien and somehow shocking. “Come on baby, don’t you want the honour of being my first patient?”

“Oh, but I’m not the one who’s sick, César – you are.”

“Yeah? Maybe you’d better help me out then.” He kisses the line of Kevin’s jaw and sneaks in a peck at the corner of his mouth. “How come you haven’t called me up this week, hm? Why are you ignoring my texts? I was good for you baby, I know I was. Why you got to play me like this – make me rig competitions just to see you?”

“I was going to...” Kevin gasps at César’s teeth scraping against his Adam’s apple. “I was going to call you over again – when I couldn’t stand it any longer.”

“Jesus Kev, what am I – your fix, your dirty secret?”

“It’s not like that.”

He pulls back. “Yeah, right. You figure you’re the first person to think I’m a pretty good fuck but too embarrassing to be seen with in the light of day?” César’s face is doing something unfamiliar: his mouth turned down at the corners and his brow furrowed. 

Kevin doesn’t like it – the lack of even a rudimentary smile is unsettling. He doesn’t know what to say – he’s so far from understanding the complexities of other people’s emotions, or even the muted simplicity of his own. 

“Kev, I’m crazy about you – you know that – and I treat you right, don’t I?” César sighs quietly and rubs the mole under Kevin’s lip like it’s a talisman. “I’m just getting kind of tired of this game where you pretend you hate being around me and I have to chase you.”

“Ok.”

“Ok what?”

“I won’t make you chase me.” Kevin is not sure that was what he was doing in the first place, but it makes César’s expression soften and his mouth turn the right way. César kisses him again and it’s soft and lingering this time. Kevin gets his arms around him and squeezes him, leans into the warmth. Is this what he knew, all along – that if he touched him, felt how soft and yielding his flesh is – he would be lost?

“Alright,” César murmurs, “so how about a date on Saturday?”

“Saturday?” Kevin echoes stupidly.

“Yeah. I want to take you dancing – what do you say?”

“Where would we do that?”

“Not in the Bluffs, I guess – this place is like that fascist town in _Footloose_.” Kevin clenches his fingers on César’s waist and hears him yelp. “Argh – get your fucking day-glo talons out of me!”

“Gee, I’m so sorry, César – I guess I just have this completely involuntary reaction when I hear someone disparage my home town.”

César laughs. “Involuntary, right. What do you say we come out of this closet? I’ll buy you a glass of tap water in the macrobiotic cafeteria.”

When they step out of the supply room into the laboratory they find Intern John-or-Jack waiting, face bloodless with panic.

“Kevin,” he gasps, “station management have been calling wanting to know why we’re not back yet!”

César grins. “Well you just run along and tell them I’m showing Kevin my special equipment. Might be a while – it’s very impressive.” 

Kevin elbows the doctor hard enough that he yelps, motioning for the intern to go ahead. “I’ll catch you up... John.”

“It’s James.”

“ _Whatever_.”

“Nice kid,” says César, watching him stumble out of the room. “Reminds me of a young Macaulay Culkin. You know, before he went all meth-face.”

“Shut up,” Kevin says, darting forward to kiss him and twisting his hands in the stained, messily-knotted tie. When he pulls away, César grins at him stupidly. 

“Call me later, huh?”

“Ok.”

“Swear?”

“A community radio host’s word is his bond, César.” Kevin says, striding out the door and grasping his still-dawdling intern by his press pack lanyard to drag him down the corridor.

*~*~*

“You got here fast,” Kevin says when he opens the door in his robe, a lemon yellow towel wrapped around his head. “So it seems you can be efficient when you put your mind to it.”

“Fuck, Kev – you send me a picture like that and I don’t stop for red lights.” César closes the aparment door behind himself and narrows his eyes. “Well look at you – all rosy shower-fresh, huh?” He reaches out to grab the tail of the robe’s belt but Kevin steps back and twists out of his reach. “Aw, no, no, don’t tease me baby,” he whines. “I’m a desperate man.”

“I have to dry my hair first.”

“Or what happens?”

“Or it goes frizzy and kinky.”

“I would pay good money to see your kinky side, Kev.”

“I’ll be ten minutes, ok?” Kevin pads into the bedroom and seats himself at the mirror. He can hear César banging about in the kitchen, rattling through cupboards and clinking glasses together. Kevin ignores this ill-mannered intrusion in favour of turning on the dryer to begin heat-treating his hair into submission.

After a few minutes, César enters the bedroom with a glass of some brown and presumably alcoholic liquid in his hand. “Baby, you were holding out on me. Also, you know your flowers are dead?”

“I like them better that way.” 

“Whatever’s in the water didn’t agree with them, I guess.” César sets his glass down on the nightstand with a clack and turns out the contents of his pockets next to it before starting to undress. Kevin gets distracted watching him and ends up burning his ear with the hair straighteners. The pain doesn’t immediately register as discomfort – just as a strong, uncategorized sensation, so it isn’t until he smells singed flesh and hair that he realizes his error and pulls the tongs away.

Now clad only in a pair of black satin boxers, César drapes himself sideways across the bed, propped up on his elbow and presenting himself to Kevin’s view in the mirror like some downmarket Rokeby Venus. César watches Kevin intently as he starts putting product in his hair. 

“You think this is stupid?” Kevin asks, trying to guess the significance of César’s half smile and half-lidded eyes. 

“No, nothing like that. I was just remembering.”

“Remembering what?”

“How when I was a kid I used to sit while my mom getting ready for work. I’d watch her taking out her hair rollers and doing her face.” 

“Oh?” Kevin prompts, ever the consummate journalist.

“I remember the taste of her hairspray in the air. She wore blue eyeshadow, coral lipstick and that mascara you put on in thick layers, and she always smelled like Valmor face powder and lily of the valley. I loved all that stuff – all the different scents and textures of the cosmetics. I loved just watching the ritual – her putting on her warpaint, I guess. Then again, I hated it too, because it meant I was losing her for the day.” He scratches his chin thoughtfully. “One day – I was maybe six or seven – my uncle caught me in front of that mirror trying on lipstick and he beat me around the knees with a belt.”

Kevin turns around on the stool, still carefully teasing stands of his hair between his fingers. “Oh, is that what made you stop taking care of your appearance?”

César’s eyes go wide and then he lets out a bark of laughter. “Ouch! Jesus, Kev, you ever considered a career as a counsellor?”

“Well, you say you like cosmetics, but you don’t use them. It looks like someone cut your hair with kitchen scissors. You don’t iron your clothes, you seldom shave, and I don’t think you even bother to use deodorant.”

“I do use deodorant, but I’m a big guy who lives in the middle of a fucking desert, Kev.” César sits up on the edge of the bed, hands dangling over his knees. “Look, did you ask me over here just to tell me how disgusting you think I am? Because I’m not into humiliation, if that’s your thing.”

“No, I was just wondering aloud I suppose – wondering what you would be like if you invested more in personal care.” Kevin pours more of the scented hair oil into the hollow of his palm and rubs his hands together before rising from his seat. He reaches out and cards his fingers through the dry strands of César’s hair, twirling the curls around his fingertips until they grow shiny and smooth. César lets his eyes fall closed and presses his face against Kevin’s stomach, making a low sound in his throat.

“You like that?”

“Uh huh.” César’s voice is muffled by the fabric of the robe.

It seems to stretch out for a long moment, Kevin running his fingers through the increasingly glossy strands of black and white hair, sweeping outwards from César’s temples and then forward from the nape of his neck. César’s hands settle on Kevin’s waist, faintly warm through the thick toweling cloth. It is strangely satisfying to have rendered him so quiet and pliable. When Kevin finishes teasing the curls into shape, he brings his hands to César’s shoulders; the other man looks up and gives him a dopey smile. Kevin leans down and kisses him, and it turns deep and lingering. 

“Kev,” César murmurs, squeezing his waist and pulling the knot of his belt free. “Beautiful, sexy Kev – did you scrub yourself up just for me? Hm?”

“For you?” he laughs. “Of course not.”

“So it’s just a coincidence – you texting me that picture and then hopping in the shower? Did you touch yourself, baby? Did you imagine your own soapy hands were mine?” 

“No, it was a totally normal, maximum-efficiency shower. Brisk and thorough.” 

“Yeah? Did you wash everywhere like a good boy, hm? Even where the smiling god doesn’t shine?” There is something about what César is insinuating that makes Kevin’s skin prickle. "C’mon baby, show me.”

Kevin lets the robe fall to the floor and doesn’t stop to pick it up, just scrambles onto the bed next to César; lets the other man direct and rearrange his body as his dick twitches and swells.

“Up on your knees, that’s it. Aww, fuck – someone should write a sonnet about your ass, Kev.” He feels warm, worshipful hands sliding down from the narrowest point of his waist over his buttocks and push back up again from his inner thighs, then a warm gust of breath over his – and he yelps, because no, no-one would be that obscene, not even César. A hot, wet, something flickers over his asshole, circling before pressing in. Kevin gasps and feels his knees wobble; nerve endings he didn’t know he had sparking to life and radiating tingles down his spine. 

As César continues kissing and licking him with shameless enthusiasm, Kevin finds he can do nothing except sob into the pillow in helpless, almost unbearable arousal. The tongue slips out of his ass and trails down his perineum. Heat and wetness envelop his balls – both at first, until César starts to alternate the sucking, using his tongue’s tip with the most cautious lightness to trace patterns on the thin, tender skin.

When César pulls off again with a slurping sound and a hum of enjoyment, he moves back up to push his mouth against the flexing ring of muscle. Kevin makes a high, desperate sound of alarm – his thighs are shaking so much he can hardly keep himself up, and his face is mashed into the saliva-slick pillow so hard it’s becoming a real struggle to breathe. The tongue gives a series of deep, sucking wriggles before retreating and Kevin comes back to reality for a moment as César gives a sort of affectionate slap to the curve of his ass and helps him to roll onto his side. 

“You need to tap out, baby? It’s ok, it’s ok. C’mere.”

Kevin finds he is still trembling violently, his dick aggressively flushed and leaking against the protrusion of his stomach. César swipes at his own chin with the back of his arm and grins, taking a moment to look very pleased with himself before ducking back down to take Kevin’s dick in his mouth. Kevin gasps and clenches his fingers in strands of freshly oiled hair and César moans in approval, starting to bob his head in a controlled rhythm. A well-angled finger slips into his ass, still loose and wet from César’s tongue, and the world goes black around the edges as Kevin’s whole body convulses in orgasm.

“That was special, huh?” César is saying as Kevin comes back to himself. The other man has pulled himself up the bed, his fingertips skating up and down Kevin’s chest and stomach.

“That was depraved,” Kevin tells him. He wants to sound stern, but instead he sounds like a teenage boy whose voice is breaking. César just laughs. “ _Yeah_ it was. Fuck Kev, the sounds you make. I thought you were going to pass out on me.”

“I was not.” Kevin wants to sound defiant this time, but his voice is still wildly skipping whole octaves.

“Mm hmm,” César agrees breezily, raising himself on his hands over Kevin’s torso. “You need a break, or you up for some reciprocation?”

“I’m not putting my tongue in your anus, César. I’m pretty sure there’s a section expressly forbidding that kind of contact in the company health and safety guidelines.”

“I didn’t even mean that, you big prude.” César straddles him and reaches over to the bedside table, picking up another foil packet and scrutinizing it. “I couldn’t find any of these things made in offal flavour – you like strawberry?” He picks up another. “Or lime? I think I have a chocolate one somewhere...”

“Lime is acceptable.”

“Well ok then,” César struggles briefly with the waistband of his boxers, then rips open the sachet and rolls the flavoured condom over his freed erection. “So, uh... you done this before? You know _teeth_ aren’t supposed to be involved, right?”

“If you say so,” Kevin sits up against the bank of pillows and puts his hands on César’s hips before leaning forward to take the offered member into his mouth.

“Aw, fuck baby,” César hisses. “Take it easy, don’t choke.” 

Kevin hums around him and tightens his fingers on César’s waist, The sensation is unexpectedly good - ticklish and hot. He finds it easy to establish a rhythm, to tilt his head up and just swallow down until his nose touches the unruly thatch of hair at the base of César’s cock. 

“Shit, you have no gag reflex, huh?” César groans, begins to cautiously rock his hips. “How did I get so lucky? Jesus, look at you. Look at you just fucking taking that.”

Kevin hums again and closes his eyes. It’s hypnotic, the pressure and slide; even the synthetic fruit taste doesn’t bother him as much as it should. César moans and curses above him, calls him an angel and a slut in a tone that implies both are compliments, then shudders and jerks against him, headboard squeaking under his white-knuckled clench. He pulls out slowly and Kevin slumps down onto the bed, rubbing his throat absently, his body suffused with a sort of lazy satisfaction that would probably bother him if he had the energy for alarm. 

César disappears off the bed for a moment and there is the soft hiss of something hitting the trash can. Then the bed dips again with his body weight, rolling Kevin up against his sweaty side. He hears César giving a heartfelt sigh and a hand flops over onto Kevin’s shoulder. “You ok there, sport?” 

“I think so,” Kevin says, finding his voice only a little hoarse. “You?”

“Oh, I’m fantastic.”

There is a warm, muzzy silence for a while. Multiple thoughts rattle around in Kevin’s head like balls in a lottery machine until one of them finally pops out of the tumult and rolls to the front of his consciousness. “Hey César – why do you... why do you wear a condom, but you don’t put one on me?”

“Ah,” César laughs and rubs a hand over his face. “Yeah. So you’re clean but I kind of have a question mark right now.”

“How do you know – oh, you have access to my medical records, don’t you?”

César grins broadly. “Sure I do.”

“What do you mean ‘question mark’?”

“It’s probably nothing–”

“Oh _God_. Should I burn these sheets?”

“Chill, Kev. It’s just that I kind of stopped off in Vegas on my way down here when I got the job. Ended up winning a little money. Then, y’know, celebrating by spending it.”

“Celebrating how?”

“Well, first I met this nice lady in the casino. Working girl, right?”

“I’m glad _somebody_ was working.”

“Ha! Well, champagne was flowing by this time, we took the party upstairs to my room. Man, she was fiesty. Between rounds we got to talking, and that my tastes are kind of... eclectic, right? Turns out she has a friend she can call to join us. This boy was _talented_. I mean, he could’ve sucked the brass off a doorknob.” César makes a hissing sound through his teeth and looks off, eyes going misty at the recollection. “So uh, yeah, they double-teamed me till dawn. I think protection was involved but fuck – I was coked out of my skull, so...”

“Question mark.”

“Yeah. For a little while. Is it a turn off for you – me wearing a rubber?”

“No.” Kevin thinks for a moment. “It’s surprisingly responsible of you.”

“What an endorsement!” César laughs. “I’m going to put that on a billboard or something – ‘Dr. César: never knowingly infecting people with STIs – a real class act!’” He leans over to kiss Kevin, but Kevin turns his face away.

“No way. I know where your tongue has been.”

“Fine, be like that.” César stomps the few steps from the bed to the bathroom and Kevin hears water running, the sound of teeth being brushed. 

“Are you using my toothbrush?” Kevin calls.

César emerges with a plastic handle protruding from the corner of his mouth and leans his hip against the door frame. “I don’t know,” he mumbles around a mouthful of bristles and foam. “Is yours this pink one from the medicine cabinet?”

“No, I don’t know where that came from. It’s been here for years.”

“Then I guess the germs of its owner are long dead.” César shrugs and heads back into the bathroom, where the sound of spitting is followed by the sound of gargling and more spitting. When he bounces back onto the bed he reaches over Kevin to pluck his glass off the nightstand and take a hearty sip. “Ah – I’m calling this the ‘mix-in-the-mouth mint julep’. C’mere and try it.” Before Kevin can protest, a wet, bristly mouth is pressing against his own, making him taste spearmint and what his brain for some reason recognises as bourbon.

“Thanks for the invite,” César says as he settles back onto the bed, arm around Kevin’s shoulders. “How about next time we go over to mine? I have a lot of toys we could have fun with.”

“We’re too old for toys.”

“ _Adult_ toys, Kev. You know, sex aids.”

“Oh,” Kevin blinks.

“We still on for Saturday?”

Kevin sighs. “I have to work.”

“It’s the weekend!”

“The weekend is a lie brought to this country by lazy European agitators,” Kevin tells him drowsily.

César strokes his hair and gives a low, soothing chuckle. “Whatever you say, baby.”

*~*~*

Saturday evening finds Kevin once more being kidnapped from the parking lot of the radio station and cajoled into the passenger seat of César’s rusty SUV. 

“How come you’ve never been to Night Vale?” The doctor asks him as they speed down Route 800. “I mean, it’s just the next town over.”

“Well, when you come from Desert Bluffs you already hit the jackpot. Going to other places never seemed like a priority. I bet it’s nice there, though.”

“Oh yeah? What makes you think that?”

“Because StrexCorp want to expand their operations there.”

“You think you could ever love anything with the creepy intensity you love Desert Bluffs and StrexCorp?”

“I can’t imagine why I would.”

“Uh huh.” César reaches over and ruffles Kevin’s hair.

“Quit that!”

“Aw baby, I just love it when you’re a little messed-up.” César squints at the road and slows their rate of acceleration. “Do you recognize that dead lizard? I’m sure we passed that thing before. I remember the the tire-tread on its stomach. Wait – that stop sign with the bent corner, we’ve been here before. How the hell... did I turn off somewhere and circle around?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Aw shit. This isn’t one of those horror movie things, is it? Did we die in a crash back there and now we’re stuck together on an eternal road trip?”

Kevin laughs gaily. “No, silly. This stretch of road has always been glitchy. It’s always coming up at town meetings – a thing you would know, _César_ , if you ever had enough community spirit to go to one. Anyway, something about inter-dimensional work permits keeps getting the repair put back.”

“Yeeeeah. Whatever you say, Rod Serling. So, what are we supposed to do now? Pull over and die of dehydration?”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. The glitch will reset in an hour or two. We just have to find out where the pattern repeats and wait.”

“How do we do that?”

“Ugh, don’t you know anything? What did they teach you in school?”

“Not how to find errors in space-time, clearly.”

“Keep driving, but slow down. I’ll tell you when.”

As he drives, Kevin keeps swiveling around in his seat and opening and closing his eye-holes one at a time, seemingly at random. “Stop! Back up a few feet, sloooowly. Stop!”

“Kev, I uh, I really don’t see the difference.”

“Don’t you?” Kevin has added a sort of gleam of accomplishment to his ever-present smile. “Jump out and I’ll show you.”

Inside the car it seemed a sort of uniform, hazy twilight, but when César steps out onto the uneven asphalt, he discovers that something altogether more disorientating seems to be going on with the light.

“There.” Kevin’s hands on his shoulders turn him towards the highway, in the direction the nose of the car is pointing. The light fades and all of a sudden he is peering into darkness – a huge black vista twinkling with pale stars; seeming bigger, somehow than César feels he can comprehend. Just out of the corner of his eye he can see a road sign reading NIGHT VALE 8 MILES, but when he turns his head it vanishes and he is looking at vague, nondescript, non-time desert.

“See? Now look this way.” Kevin turns him again, a rotation of one hundred and eighty degrees. The car seems to be pointing ahead of him again, which makes absolutely no sense, and now everything is bathed in a familiar bright light that turns the world paper-thin and so terribly unreal. He can still see the sign in his peripheral vision, but now it reads DESERT BLUFFS 8 MILES.

“Trippy,” he says, turning back towards Night Vale. His brain seems to spin wildly on its axis for a moment before it rights itself, like the automatic oscillations of a smartphone screen. “Is it always dark in Night Vale, the same way it’s always light in Desert Bluffs?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin says thoughtfully, resting his chin on César’s shoulder. “It’s an interesting question.” He genuinely sounds surprised that César might have actual thoughts in his head. “Next time I interview the Sunbeams, I’ll ask them. If they still care to remember, of course.”

“So how do we know when the road has fixed itself?”

“Oh, we have to listen.” Kevin moves away back to the car, ducking his head back inside and fiddling with something at the dash. There is a click and then the sound of radio static.

César leans back against the hood and pats the dusty expanse of hot metal next to him. Kevin takes a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dusts the surface off fastidiously before joining him. César reaches over and takes his hand, puts their linked fingers on Kevin’s knee as he tilts his head up to gaze at the stars.

“It’s beautiful, huh?”

“If you like that kind of thing.”

“What do you think all those lights are – not the stars, the other ones?”

“I don’t know.”

For a time there is companionable silence between them, buffered by the sounds of crickets and static. Eventually, César asks: “Hey Kev, do you remember what you were like before?”

“Before what?”

“You know – before. Before your eyeballs became all see-through, for instance. Before you starting thinking animal viscera really ties a room together.”

“Oh. You mean when I was lazy and imperfect?”

“Yeah. You remember that?”

“No, and nor do I care to.”

“You don’t even remember... what happened?”

“Oh, maybe you’ll find out one day, if you’re so curious. If the smiling god chooses you.”

“Fuck, I really hope not.” César looks at him sidelong. “What’s it like?”

“It’s very quiet. I think I used to worry a lot. I used to rabble-rouse and cause trouble. Now I see there’s no need for any of that, it’s a waste of energy. Now I go to work and I’m useful; I come home and it’s peaceful. I’m organized and it’s easy to transition from task to task.”

“And that’s a good life to you?”

“Of course.”

“What about love, and family – don’t you want those?”

“I suppose if the company directs me to change my status–”

César laughs. “You think Strex is going to order you a bride, or something? Shit, no – some kind of biomachine to play house with, right? You’d better hope it has a vibrate setting.”

“You’re disgusting, César.”

“So you keep saying.”

“I don’t know why you’re so smug – it’s not as if your personal decisions have been so very excellent.”

César claps a hand to his chest. “Ha ha, ouch – you got me. I’m a giant fuck-up. Still, I’ve made so many mistakes I figure I must be well on my way to getting wise. Y’know, by a process of elimination.”

The radio shrieks and pops, giving them snatches of an evangelist’s polemic, followed by part of a shipping forecast and then a series of ominous rumbling sounds.

“This our cue?” César asks, hopping to his feet.

Kevin cocks his head to one side. “No, those aren’t our stations.”

The radio settles on the introduction to a song, the plink of a piano and rhythmic tap of drumsticks marking time before a woman’s voice soars over the opening lines: “ _Darling you send me, darling you send me... honest you do, honest you do..._ ”

“Aw, Aretha! This is my jam. Come on, get up – I’m asking and you’re dancing.”

Kevin lets himself be pulled to his feet. “Why do you listen to such outdated and irrelevant music?”

“Oh, I know a black man born in the seventies did not just ask me why I like soul. C’mere. One hand up here, one hand on my waist and squeeze me close.”

They rock slowly back and forth and César keeps facing toward Night Vale, looking at the sky, more void than stars.

“I thought dances had set steps,” Kevin murmurs as he leans down to press their cheeks together, half-remembering this intimacy from a former life.

“My salsa’s a little rusty.”

The song cuts out as abruptly as it came on, and there is only wandering static again. They stay very still, just holding each other and listening for what will come through next. It is a man’s voice, pitched low and vibrating slightly with fervent excitement: “ _Perfection is not real. Perfection is not human._ ” The broadcast crackles and warps out of existence for a moment, before coming in clearer. “ _Everything about him, and us, and all of this, is imperfect! And those imperfections in our reality are the seams and cracks into which our out-sized love can seep and pool. And sometimes we are annoyed, and disappointed, and that too is part of how love works. It is not a perfect system, but oh! Oh, well. And so I resisted._ ”

Kevin breaks away from César, spinning him slightly out of alignment and leaving him alone in the nowhere desert.

On the radio, the man’s voice is growing more passionate as his story builds to its crescendo: “ _I fought off the vision of the shrouded figures and the dark planet and all that was perfect and I held close to imperfection. To my own imperfection. To my imperfect Carlos. I took him, and I carried him out of the cube. I came up, heaving, into this world that will disappoint us. Finally, free–_ ”

The radio clicks off and Kevin makes a noise of mingled rage and contempt. It doesn’t sound like something a human throat is supposed to make and the tension in his facial muscles is all wrong. For the first time César feels frightened of Kevin, the hair standing up all along the back of his neck.

“Hey,” César turns around and finds the world making directional sense again. The signs by the side of the road are still there, but now pointing, as they should, in opposite directions. “Where did that come from?”

“Not from Desert Bluffs, I can tell you that much.”

“Night Vale, then?”

“Maybe.”

“You ok?”

“I’m fine, César,” Kevin’s smile is bright and brittle-looking. “I am always fine.”

“Alright,” César says, cautiously. “You want to... you want to head back home?”

“Yes, I would like that. I don’t think I want to go to Night Vale after all.”

“That’s ok. Whatever you want, baby. It’s all ok.”

They get in the car and César turns it around and drives until the confusing twilight becomes white glare once more. When they get to the city limits, Kevin puts his hand on César’s knee and turns the radio back on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cecil’s speech that I quoted here is an excerpt from ‘Condos’ (the live show from a good while back that’s still available to buy – if you haven’t got it already).


	5. Chapter 5

Kevin is buzzed in at the front door of César’s building, and when he climbs the stairs he finds the apartment door ajar. 

“Hello?” he calls, having more manners than to simply barge in.

“Hey, sweet thing, come on in!”

He finds César standing in the kitchenette, trying to read the instructional manual that goes with the stove. He looks up at Kevin’s approach and the furrows smooth out of his brow. “Hey baby, did you have a good day?”

“Satisfactorily productive,” Kevin leans on the breakfast bar to peer over at the bag of groceries at César’s elbow. “What have you got there?”

“Dinner, hopefully. Steak, potatoes, greens. Figure nobody could object to that except a vegetarian. And nobody in this town is a vegetarian.” César grins at him and leans across the countertop to kiss him. “Hope you don’t mind – I want to keep you to myself tonight.”

“I don’t mind. I just didn’t know you could cook. It doesn’t look like you use this kitchen much.”

“Yeah, always found cooking for one too fucking depressing to contemplate. I come from a big family, you know? Never really got my head around privacy or silence – even after I moved to this country and it was just me and my mom.”

“What’s all this?” Kevin indicates the opposite end of the living room where boxes are spilling out of an open closet. 

“Oh yeah – I finally got around to unpacking a little. Found my record player and amps.” César points across the room to where the sound system sits on top of a table that has been shoved against a wall. “How about you put some music on for us?”

Kevin obediently crosses to the table and begins the flick through a battered box of LPs. “You realise you’re about three recording media behind the rest of us?”

“Can’t beat analogue sound, though, Kev – c’mon, you work in radio, you must know that.”

“Oh, I disagree. It’s much easier to corrupt digital.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

Kevin laughs. “Of course it is, silly. We have no use for things that are uncooperative and _inflexible_.” He pulls out a record at random and slips it out of the paper sleeve before placing it on the turntable and pressing the button that sets it to spinning. With a hushed care that is another muscle-memory from the forgotten depths he lifts the armature and sets the needle on the disc’s outer rim. Soon, the music starts and a woman sings in a throaty contralto about wanting a Sunday kind of love. 

“Is it weird that I’m starting to like this place?” César is saying, bent over and fiddling with the dials on his stove. “It seems like it should be weird, you know – because of all the unrelenting horror and the way you guys never shut the hell up about work.” 

Kevin comes up behind him and slips his arms around the other man’s waist.

“Well, hi there,” César says, smiling over his shoulder as he straightens and leans back into the embrace.

“You smell nice,” Kevin tells him. “Like iron and decay.”

“Uh, I think that’s probably the meat. Or the smell of the butcher’s shop on my clothes.”

“Oh?” Kevin reaches out to the counter and runs his finger through the puddle of red on the wax paper. He dabs it behind César’s ears and in a long, crisscross motion down his neck. 

“See,” says César, “this is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about – you – oh, sweet Jesus...” 

Kevin licks and nuzzles at the corner of his jaw, scrapes the skin lightly with his teeth. “I want you.”

“What for – to eat? Because I’m no spring chicken, you know – wouldn’t recommend it.”

Kevin sucks his earlobe while kneading the general area of his kidneys. “The secret to bringing out the best in cheaper cuts is long, slow cooking.”

“Ok, Martha Stewart. I kinda hope this goes without saying, but please don’t kill and eat me. Or use my inside parts for interior decor.”

“Don’t worry – you taste better in one piece.” Kevin rubs his hands over César’s belly and squeezes him tightly. César turns in his arms and kisses him, hands in his hair.

“Bedroom?”

“Not just yet.” Kevin places his hands on César’s hips and turns him. “Put the potatoes in.”

“Put the potatoes in where, exactly?”

“The oven.”

“Huh?”

“They take an hour to bake. Why do tasks one at a time when you can have several in progress at once?”

César yanks open the oven door and rattles the vegetables onto the rack, then he moans softly as Kevin’s tongue traces shapes on the skin below his ear. “Shit, Kev... you cannot give me an efficiency kink.” 

“Oh no? How about you set the oven timer, go on.” Kevin’s fingers cover César’s as they push at the buttons. “That’s it, _baby_. Hit set.” The oven bleeps and the timer flashes. “There, now you have exactly one hour to fuck me.”

“I’d better get right down to it then – no slacking off.” César grab’s Kevin’s hand and pulls him towards the bedroom.

They throw their clothes off as soon as they cross the threshold, struggling with ties and buttons between increasingly heated kisses. As he takes a step back towards the bed, Kevin’s strikes his heel against another storage container and almost topples over, but he is saved at the last second by César catching his shoulders and leaning back to drag him upright. 

“Easy, don’t trample my collection.”

Kevin turns to scrutinize the contents of the box. “What is all this?”

“It’s what I was looking for when I started dragging the other stuff out of hibernation. So anyway – ta dah, sex toys! Go ahead, knock yourself out.”

Kevin narrow his eyes at the miscellaneous collection of strangely-shaped items in bright rubber and silicone. “You want me to... touch them?”

“Don’t look at me like that. They’re all clean – I put everything waterproof through the dishwasher.”

Kevin looks up at him consideringly. “It... are you one of those people you know, oh – now, whatever is it called? Whips and leather... the terrible but very profitable book...”

“BDSM?”

“Yes!”

César laughs and shakes his head. “Nah. I mean, hooked up with a few people who were, but it’s not my thing. I don’t know – just always seemed to have too many stages and rules, and I’m not into all the scene-setting and ‘blah blah call me Master’. I got simple tastes, you know? I’m spontaneous.”

Kevin rummages through the items and comes up with something hefty and cylindrical. “Is this a torch?”

“Fleshlight. It’s uh... you put your dick in it.”

“And then?”

“You imagine you’re fucking something. Someone. In this case, a female someone.”

“Oh yes?” Kevin’s fingertip presses against the folds of soft pink latex, tracing their outline and pressing inside. César feels his cock twitching against the seam of his boxers – he doesn’t know why the idea of Kevin touching a woman gets him so hot. Maybe it’s something about the look of concentration.

“Hey, you ever been with a girl?”

“I don’t know.” Kevin tilts his head to one side as he moves to stand before César. “Maybe. Tell me what it’s like.”

“They’re so _soft_ , Kev, musky and warm.”

“But you’re like that.” Kevin bites his lip and trails a fingernail down César’s chest, pinching his nipple between his fingertips and pushing it back into his generous flesh.

“I wouldn’t make a very convincing woman, Kev. Out of the two of us, you’re definitely the prettiest. I love that, you know? The way you do your hair, the way you wear your clothes – though I could do without the blood-spatter.” 

“That’s how I express my individuality.”

“Uh-huh.” César pulls his phone out of his pants pocket before pushing the garment down and kicking it across the floor. He sits down heavily and pats the bed. “C’mere, I’ll show you.” Kevin joins him on the bed, cradling the Fleshlight in his arm and César holds out the phone for him to see. He opens an app and taps a few times, faster than Kevin can process. A video starts to play, a woman with dark hair looking over her shoulder and tilting her ample buttocks towards the camera as she slowly works down a hot pink thong. The actress turns and fans her hands out between her thighs, looking at the camera as she plays the game of hiding and revealing her shaven crotch. 

“You like that,” César murmurs against his ear, “looking at her? Make you feel hot?” 

The images don’t arouse any particular sensations at all in Kevin, but he’s very conscious of the warmth of César’s hand on the small of his back, the heavy breathing tickling his ear. The video jump-cuts to a scene where an equally tanned and hairless male counterpart leans over the actress, the latter now seated on a white leather recliner with each leg hooked over an arm. The male actor rubs the head of his penis over her vulva, dips in and pulls out again as if teasing. She lets out her breath in a hiss and runs a had back through her crisp, styled locks.

“You like that, hmm?”

“They seem to be good at their jobs,” Kevin concedes. 

César gives his low, filthy chuckle and stops the video, placing the phone face-down on the table. “That’s ok, I don’t need porn when I have you, baby.” He nuzzles Kevin’s jaw and moves his hand downward to give his ass a squeeze. 

Kevin is still holding the toy, gazing at it speculatively and back up to César.

“You want to try that?” 

Kevin nods. “Will you hold it for me – will you hold it between your thighs?”

“What, so you can pretend I’m a woman?”

“Do you mind?”

César squeezes him again, rocking into his side. “No, fuck, I don’t mind! I mean it’s weird, but I’m into it.” He scrambles up and moves so he is kneeling on the bed, knees close to the edge of the mattress. He struggles for a moment to get the toy gripped in a position where it is close enough to press against the underside of his cock (which is lying up against his hip beneath the layer of damp satin) while not crushing his other delicate parts. Kevin stands, as César’s position seems to require. 

César leans over and yanks open the nightstand drawer to grab some lubricant. He flicks open the bottle cap with his thumb and works some of the gel into the toy’s opening, leaving the artful folds of silicone glistening wet. He then throws the bottle aside to land somewhere among their shed clothing and reaches out to grab Kevin by the waistband of his brushed cotton briefs, tugging to urge him to step closer. As he rubs the fabric between finger and thumb he comments, “we got to work on getting you something hotter than these.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Nothing, I guess, but I see you in lace.” César’s hands come up to cradle Kevin’s hips, thumbs rubbing in circles over the ridges of bone. “Would you like that? Hmm? I’d suck you through them.”

“You’ll suck me through these if I ask.”

César looks up, crinkling his brow. “Oh yeah, you think so?”

“I know so. Do it.”

“Yeah ok, but not because I like the undies. Just because you have a beautiful dick and I like it when you boss me around.” 

He puts his mouth on Kevin and feels fingernails against his scalp, prickling as the hands clench and unclench. He drags his bottom teeth against the fabric and mouths the shape of him; the cotton goes damp under his lips and he can feel Kevin twitching against them, hear him panting. Losing patience with the thick fabric, César pulls the waistband down to get his mouth around the tip and finally taste him.

Kevin pulls back, tugging a handful of César’s hair to make him tilt his head back. 

César sucks his bottom lip and grins. “Well, look at you. Kinda found your stride with this, huh?” 

“Why don’t you pretend we’re in one of your favourite movies, hmm? No talking, just working.”

“Porn stars are allowed to talk,” César leans in again and starts to slowly kiss his way up Kevin’s stomach. “They have to say things to set the mood, things like ‘mmm, I want that big dick. Put it in me, baby.’”

“Do you?” Kevin cocks his head to one side. “And where do you want me to put it, César?”

“Anywhere. Jesus, anywhere in me you fucking want, Kev.”

“Say it.”

“Mmm,” César sits back on his heels and runs his thumb around the circular lip of the toy, “put it in my pussy. _Please_.”

“ _Yes_.” Kevin wraps one of his arms around César’s shoulders, with the other he grasps himself and pushes, sliding slowly into the toy. He grunts and moves his hips, thrusting shallowly to experience more of the sensation. “Oh!” he says in a tone of thrilled surprise, “ _oh_!”

“You like that, huh?” 

Kevin leans in closer and slides his hand down César’s back, leading with his palm and lifting his fingertips so his nails don’t scrape too deeply (he has learned that the other man is bizarrely oversensitive to pain). They kiss, open-mouthed and sloppy, Kevin’s tongue curling up to trace the grooves between César’s teeth.

As Kevin moves his hips he finds himself intrigued by the contrast between synthetic and organic: the toy is tight, but cooler and stiffer than flesh; César’s body is warm and inviting, just a little tacky with perspiration and so very, very _alive_. A few minutes of the stimulation has him groaning quietly into César’s mouth and clutching at his shoulders. Then suddenly César makes a considering sound into their kiss and his hands move from where they have been kneading the flesh of Kevin’s ass to catch his hips.

“Hey, hold up a minute,” he says, pushing Kevin back so he slips out of the toy with a slick sound. 

“What’s wrong?”

“My legs are cramping up – ow!” César puts the toy aside on the bed and rolls onto his side, stretching his legs out and flexing his toes. “Did that feel good, baby?” 

“Mm-hmm.” Kevin sits down next to him and trails a hand down the centre of his chest. 

“Oh yeah? You want to change position and keep going?”

Kevin thinks about it and shakes his head. “I want _you_ , your body.”

This prompts César to break out the widest smile Kevin has ever seen on him. “Is that so? What do you want to do with my body?”

Kevin’s fingers skate over the summit of César’s belly, trailing faint red lines in their wake, then around to the small of his back and drag downwards.

César makes a hissing sound and grabs Kevin’s elbow, pulling him down for a long kiss. “Mmm, well ok then. Have a look in that box for me, will you baby? See if you can find a purple silicone plug – the medium-size one.”

“Why?”

“Well, mainly because I am one hundred per-cent sure I do not want your Freddy Krueger nails in my ass.” 

Kevin thinks about making a cutting comment in retort to this, but the longer he hesitates, the longer it will be until he is having more mind-blowing sex. He obediently scrambles off the bed and goes to find the item specified.

Meanwhile, César rolls onto his back to pull off his underwear, then turns onto his side, one knee pulled up to let him balance. “You find it?” he calls.

“This?” Kevin holds up what he considers to be a likely-looking object.

“No, that’s a cock ring. It should look like something you would put up your ass, Kev – come on.”

“This?”

“Ben wa balls. Getting warmer, but no.”

“This?”

“Good job, sport. Find the lube while you’re at it.”

His tasks accomplished, Kevin climbs back onto the bed and lies next to César, who hooks one leg over his thigh and presses closer, kissing the corner of his mouth in soft, lingering pecks. “C’mon, how about you get me nice and ready for you?”

“You want me to...?” Kevin indicates the toy.

“Yeah, that’s the general idea.” 

Kevin fits his body up against César’s, rubs their cocks together and gasps when César’s hand struggles to close around them both, squeezing up and down slowly. César murmurs things he can’t quite catch, sighs against his neck. 

It takes Kevin a few moments to slick up the plug and work out the best angle for insertion. As he starts to work it slowly in, César buries his face in the gap between the pillows and groans, fingers clenching and uncurling in the sheets.

“Is that a good noise?”

“Uh-huh. Twist it a little. Oh, sweet Jesus!” he gives a full-body shudder and squeezes them both tighter in his hand. After a few more minutes of increasingly desperate making out and pushing their bodies together in a slow writhe on top of the sheets, César breaks for air. “Yeah, yeah ok, that’s good enough. Pull it out nice and slow for me. Oh, oh fuck!” 

He rolls Kevin to lie on his back and clambers on top of him. Kevin tilts his head back and watches César scrabbling for a condom, tearing off the corner and rolling it on to Kevin in a series of surprisingly quick and deft movements (perhaps he has had some medical training, after all).

César rises onto his knees and reaches backwards, then lowers himself onto Kevin’s dick with an obscenely loud groan. “Oh fuck yeah. _Yeah_. Shit, it’s been a while – that’s so fucking good.” 

As César starts to move, Kevin opens his mouth but no sound comes out except a juddering exhalation of breath. Warm hands rub his chest, moving down his shoulders in firm, settling strokes, making him feel very grounded and real.

“You like this?” César asks, bouncing faster. “Better than the toy?”

“So much better. César – I can’t–”

“Shh, easy baby. Don’t tense up, don’t come yet, just let me feel you for a little while longer.”

Kevin tries to rein it back; he closes his eyes to block out the additional stimulus of sight. Touch is not usually his strongest sense, but he can still feel the warmth and cushioning weight of César, the tight pull of his body around Kevin’s dick. Then there are the sounds: the vigorous slap of flesh, César’s low murmurs of encouragement – it’s all too much. Kevin fights for control and then he just... stops fighting, tilts his hips up, and for a few glorious strokes meets César on the downward thrust and gives up everything. When he comes he feels a tightening spiral that draws him up, up against the soft, heavy presence on top of him and then lets him back down. He’s hot and breathless and he feels like he’s floating.

“Oh, such a bad boy, couldn’t fucking wait–” César shifts on top of him but doesn’t move off yet, his hand almost a blur as he strokes himself, groans and twitches and throws his head back as he comes all over Kevin’s stomach and chest. 

“Fuck that was good,” César gasps out, trying to catch his breath. He leans down and presses their sweaty foreheads together for a long moment before climbing off. It is all Kevin can do to sprawl there with his muscles ticking like a cooling car engine.

“Look at you, you’re such a big baby,” César says as he comes back to clean Kevin up. “All bossy and efficient until the clothes come off, then you’re just putty in my hands.”

Kevin blinks at him languidly as César drags a warm washcloth over his stomach. “Oh, is that right?” He stretches. “Is dinner going to be ready soon?”

César chuckles as he settles himself by Kevin’s side. “Don’t worry – it’s on a timer.”

The record has finished and it now emits a quiet, bumping hiss; in the bedroom where they lie it is so faint it sounds almost like rain. Kevin rolls over and puts his arm across César, kisses his shoulder and rests his cheek there. They doze for a while, César’s fingertips trailing up and down Kevin’s arm, his breathing evening out as he comes down from the exertion.

“Tell me something,” Kevin says.

“Mmmf, like what?” 

“I don’t know. One of your stories about your life.”

“You like those?”

Kevin makes a non-comital sound. He is conflicted about this issue. On one hand, he doesn’t have any memories that stretch beyond the recent past, and so the stories interest him; but on the other, he’s also concerned that as nature abhors a vacuum, the empty chambers of his brain might absorb César’s memories as his own.

“What do you want to hear, huh? Did I tell you about the first person who ever broke my heart?”

“No, you didn’t.”

César sighs dramatically. “I was nine years old. His name was Tomás, and he lived down the street. We used to play football together sometimes. He had these black, perfect curls, and a lisp I thought was really cute. One day when we were turning down the alley to cut across to our houses, I grabbed his hand and I kissed him, and just for a second he kissed me back. Then he punched me and I broke my first adult tooth. Right bicuspid.”

“You said he broke your heart, not your tooth.”

“No reason he couldn’t do both. It was very traumatic.”

“It doesn’t appear that you let it discourage you.”

César laughs. “No. I was always a persistent little fucker.”

“I think that’s your best quality, persistence.”

“Huh. I didn’t know I had any good qualities in your opinion, let alone a best one.” César smiles at Kevin and kisses him softly between his eyebrows.

Kevin begins to consider what he’s going to say next, but before he can properly gather his thoughts on the subject, the oven dings. 

*~*~*

“ _Until next time Desert Bluffs. Until next time._ ”

As Kevin removes his headphones, there comes a knock at one of the broken studio windows.

“Worker Kevin,” Daniel says. “You are wanted in station management’s office.”

“Oh, did the new batch of sponsor advertisements come in?”

“I am not authorized to provide further information.”

“Ok then,” Kevin says in his habitual tone of professional cheer. He leaves his studio and heads down the the hallway, with its dark, river-like trench of wet and dried blood, and many framed photographs of teeth, both embedded in skulls and separately scattered across an array of backgrounds. He knocks and receives instruction to enter, but on stepping inside he finds that his manager nowhere in sight and the room is full of strangers. They all wear the uniform of Upper Corporate: navy suits and yellow ties held in place with a Strex logo pin. 

“Well hello there, Kevin!” says a bright, tremulous voice. Its owner is a full-figured woman with a flicked out bob. She wears a candy-stripe blouse beneath her blazer and her nails and small rosebud of a mouth are painted a deep red. She gets up and holds out her hand. “I’m Lauren Mallard. It’s so nice to finally meet you,” she says as she smiles and pumps his hand briskly. “In fact, I really can’t think why we haven’t met before. Please, sit.”

“May I ask the occasion?” Kevin says as he seats himself on the empty chair. “I survived my last performance review just three months ago.”

“Oh, we know that, Kevin. And you have nothing to worry about – such an important service you provide to the company. What use would it be us telling our workers what to do with their bodies if their minds were elsewhere? The two parts are usually connected, after all!”

“Usually,” Kevin agrees, crossing one leg over the other and arranging his hands in his lap. 

“Gosh, and aren’t you well turned out? I like that, Kevin. A worker who takes pride in their appearance, and who puts on a really big smile like yours – they’re exactly the kind of people we want in this town.” She gives a brittle, trilling laugh. “Oh, we’re going to be good friends, aren’t we?”

Kevin thinks that the answer to this last question is ‘no’, but it seems to be rhetorical, so he doesn’t reply. 

“Well. Let’s get down to it, shall we? I think you know César, the doctor?”

“Yes, I know him. I did a report on his clinic a few weeks ago.” Kevin thinks about adding that César is his boyfriend, but he believes very strongly in keeping his personal life out of his workplace. When he is at work he tries to block out all extraneous distractions, especially loud, obnoxious, sex-crazed ones. “What would you like to know?” 

“Well Kevin, you see we have all the facts and figures on the performance of that new concern – the Alternative Therapies and Wellness Clinic and Spa, that is – what we really need is some feedback from the ground, as it were. What did you think of Dr. César and his team, Kevin?”

“I’m not sure I’m the best person to answer that question, Ms. Mallard.”

“Please,” she laughs, “call me Lauren. I _insist_.” 

“... _Lauren_. I haven’t used the facility as a patient, I’ve only been given a brief tour.”

“Yes, well, we’re not so interested in the patient point of view. We want to hear from someone like _you_ , Kevin.”

“A journalist?”

“One who was chosen by the Smiling God to be the bearer of its message. You know, the disciples don’t typically retain as much... personality as you did, Kevin. It’s amazing.” Her small blue eyes narrow. “ _Inexplicable_ , even.”

“I’m sure it was intended that way – it’s not like our god makes mistakes, right?”

“Oh heavens, no! I’m sure you’re perfect, Kevin, just the way you are. So what about Dr. César – is _he_ perfect?”

“Well, how could he be? He’s an outsider, after all. He wasn’t born and raised here in the Bluffs – he can’t know all our little ways.”

“You’re right there Kevin, he is an outsider. And we can’t have people in this town who aren’t really committed to our company and community’s vision, can we?”

Kevin does not reply as, again, the question seems rhetorical.

Lauren’s face goes through a number of odd contortions that Kevin is unable to read, and she drums her fingernails (square tipped, unlike Kevin’s) on the desk. “Do you know what I think?” she asks, sitting forward, her voice lilting with her broadening smile. “I think maybe we’re going about this all wrong. I can’t expect you to give helpful answers when the questions are so darn vague. You shouldn’t be spending your time and energy figuring out just what I’m getting at. Right? So I’m going to make this all more simple. I’ll ask you how you rate Dr. César in terms of a number of... qualities. I’ll say the words and you just give me a number from one to ten, ten being ‘perfect’. Ok?”

“Sure, go ahead Lauren.”

She threads her fingers together. “Competence.”

Kevin considers this – on one hand, if César’s job were to make people well it would be zero; but since he is actually employed to make sure his clinic recoups StrexCorp’s profits from workers of reduced productivity, Kevin should rate him according to these terms. “Eight.”

“Professionalism.”

“Six.”

“Brand loyalty.”

“Three.”

“Teamwork.”

“Seven.”

“Diligence.”

“One.”

Lauren nods, as if this information aligns neatly with her expectations. “Thank you, Kevin. You’ve been _so_ helpful. I just knew you would be.” She holds out her hand again, Kevin stands up and shakes it. 

“What a wonderful work environment this is,” she says, gesturing to the grey walls with their patches of deeply ingrained, rust-coloured staining. “I always think it must be so exciting to work in radio!”

*~*~*

When Kevin goes up to his office a disquieting sensation comes over him. The meeting was friendly and professional, and those are Kevin’s two favourite things, so he doesn’t know why the experience leaves him feeling off-kilter. Normally, on the rare occasions when something in his day gives Kevin a twinge of non-cheerfulness, he simply applies himself with extra vigor to his next daily task and the aberration is soon forgotten. Today he finds that even spreadsheets have lost their usual all-absorbing charm.

Kevin’s fingers twitch towards his phone and he realises he is considering texting César. Why should he do that? Their next date isn’t scheduled until Saturday and for once César isn’t bombarding him with salacious imagery and chat. 

Kevin told the truth in his interview. No-one – not even César – could expect him to do otherwise. If César really cared about how others perceived him he could easily alter his behaviour to fit with their expectations.

Kevin grips his own head as scattered thoughts struggle to coalesce around the brightness that lives inside his skull.

_What if they kill him?_

_Or worse, fire him?_

Management will do what is best for the company, what serves the Smiling God best. Kevin believes this implicitly, just as he knows that he himself could never do anything to impede or hamper the company that is the only church of his god. If César must be eliminated, then Kevin will accept that. His life will go back to what it was before César’s intrusion – it will be quiet and optimally productive. He will be able to sublimate his newly awakened desires for human company and sexual contact elsewhere. Perhaps he will be able to forge more productive links with his coworkers – what brings people closer, after all, than a night spent poring over the accounts looking for inefficiencies to eliminate? And he has learned that there is a world of ingenious adult toys marketed for personal pleasure; products that don’t draw things out unnecessarily with foreplay and idle chit-chat.

These solutions come readily to him, but they don’t stop his mind from wandering towards the clock. His organizer says he is supposed to leave work and spend a proportion of his monthly wage in ‘unspecified consumer activities’. It doesn’t say he has to do this alone, so he gives in and texts César. The phone pings in a rapid response:

_Already way ahead of u baby. Bar in nu town – c u soon._

The message is followed by an emoticon of a smiley face winking and blowing kisses and a link to Google maps, which for once is actually showing a location and not just an error message reading 404 HERE BE DRAGONS.

*~*~*

Kevin drives down to New Town and leaves his car a street near César’s apartment, walking the rest of the way to the bar. The sign above it reads ‘Metamorphose’ in a classy cursive script rendered in stainless steel. As Kevin pushes open the heavy double doors he is hit by music with a pounding bass. The interior is a disorientating combination of too dark and too bright, as the bar is decorated with rainbow-hued strip lights that flicker on and off in preprogrammed patterns. 

Kevin spots César’s accomplices first: Sven and Björn are conspicuous not only due to their size but because they are the only ones in the establishment dancing. They seem to be going about the activity with the kind of energy and grave concentration that is normally reserved for religious ritual. Kevin scans the area around them and catches sight of the other team members sitting at a table in a corner. There is the sound of uproarious laughter and the glint of the strobe lights on César’s gold teeth. 

Kevin feels a flash of – something – a sense of his own separateness. He is used to being the centre of César’s nearly overwhelming attentions, so to observe his easy intimacy with others is disconcerting.

César looks over as he approaches and his grin goes wider, he almost upsets the table rising to his feet and holding out his arms. “Kevin!” He pulls the radio host into a tight hug and gives him a wet, gin-tasting kiss. “Kevin is my boyfriend,” he tells the group. 

“We know,” Ren says, rolling her eyes.

“Isn’t he handsome? Is that not an ass that won’t quit?”

“César,” Kevin interjects, “I need to talk to you!” 

“C’mere then,” César tugs him down next to himself. “Have a drink.”

“I have to go and buy things,” Kevin objects weakly.

“Uh-huh. This place has you covered – it’s fifteen dollars a cocktail and that’s only ‘cause it’s happy hour. Here, gimme your credit card and you can buy us all a round.”

The flash of Kevin’s Am-Ex brings a server to the table, a drag queen whose already gazelle-like legs are lengthened by platform heels. She wears a purple wig in elaborate curls and her false lashes have tiny feathers on the ends so when she blinks it looks like seaweed waving in a rock pool. Her name tag reads ‘Anne Phetamine’.

“Another round of the same,” César tells her, “plus whatever he’s having.”

“Tap water, please.”

Glitter-lipsticked lips purse at this. “I’m afraid we don’t sell that. There’s no button for it on the till.”

“Oh,” says Kevin. “I guess nothing, then.”

“It’s a five drink minimum, sir”

César pats Kevin’s knee. “Just bring him the house special.”

“Coming right up.” The server leans over and plucks the card from César’s hand.

“Thanks, honey.” César’s tongue runs over the top of his teeth.

A slow, aquatic wave of the lashes. “My pleasure.” This last sentence would probably have been a seductive murmur, had not circumstances dictate it be more of a seductive yell.

“Don’t use my credit card to flirt with other people,” Kevin tells him as they watch the server leave, “it’s rude. And identity theft.” 

César laughs and slings his arm around Kevin’s shoulder, squeezing him. “Aw, were you jealous, sweet thing? Don’t worry – I’m not about to trade you in for a more statuesque model.” He gives a slightly wistful sigh. “Out of my league, anyway.” 

“And _I’m_ in your league?”

“Nah, not even close. But you’re weird, you know?”

The server returns with their drinks within a minute: Kevin really can’t fault her efficiency or the breadth and fixity of her smile. She places in front of him an array of small glasses.

“Rainbow shots!” César grins, pointing to each as he enumerates: “Aftershock, limoncello, Chartreuse, blue curacao, Chambord. Pick your poison.” At Kevin’s puzzled look he clarifies. “Not literally poison. Go ahead.” 

“Do I have to?”

“No, but I hear it’s what all the cool kids are doing. You are a cool kid, aren’t you, Kev?”

Kevin picks up the yellow shot with a look of determination and tips it back into his mouth, the action another strange reflex from the hazy ‘before’. For a moment he thinks the mouthful might just come back up again; a service elevator returning to source, but it stays in his stomach, spreading an unfamiliar warmth. The liquor leaves behind it the slight soapy aftertaste of the lemons, making him smack his lips in uncertainty of whether or not he likes it.

A warm hand pats the middle of his back. “Well done, champ. We’ll make a wild party animal out of you yet.”

César then turns to say something to Ren, who is seated to his right. Across from them is Shelley, her bare feet up on the low table displaying their grimy, calloused soles. Chet is passed out and leaning against her shoulder, a large drool patch forming on her green velvet caftan. Shelley’s smile is vague and dreamy, not bright and brimming with the will to work (as it should be). When she lifts her drink she misses several times before managing to get the straw into her mouth.

They are all undesirable persons; no moral fiber or work ethic to speak of. Kevin has nothing to reproach himself with. 

César turns back towards him and gives his waist a squeeze. His eyes are the warm brown of the whiskies that line the back of the bar. “You doing ok there? You look a little spaced out.”

“I’m fine, César,” Kevin retorts, ratcheting his smile up a notch and reaching for another glass of liquor: the green one this time. This one burns, lacking the masking sweetness of the limoncello. 

“Take it easy, ok? You don’t have to play catch-up with these degenerates. Just relax and enjoy yourself.”

Kevin feels that old spike of outrage that went along with his first meetings with César – relaxation! taking it easy! Has he not even read Appendix C.1 in the Employee Handbook (‘Complete List of No-No Words and Phrases’)? 

The music, in combination with the alcohol, is having a hypnotic effect on him, almost like the guttural roars of the Mission Statement. He lets his eyes fall closed and after a few moments pass, he feels an arm pulling him up against the other man’s warm bulk. They kiss for what seems like a long time, until Kevin’s lips are rubbed raw and tingling from César’s sandpaper-like scruff.

A sex toy couldn’t do this, Kevin thinks; it couldn’t give him this warmth and range of sensation. He opens his eyes through another kiss and looks over César’s shoulder to where he can still make out the shapes of Sven and Björn dancing, the rainbow strobes playing over the muscular contours of their bodies like streaks of watercolour paint on a canvas.

“César!” he says, louder and more insistent this time, “I need to talk to you.”

“Uh huh, and is this the kind of ‘conversation’ we could have in a locked bathroom stall?”

“What? No! Somewhere outside.”

“Mmm, how about later?” César suggests, before turning his attention to laying prickly kisses along Kevin’s neck.

“ _Now_.” When Kevin stands up the alcohol makes his legs unsteady beneath him and he has to grab hold of César, who laughs and ducks under his arm to hold him steady. 

César guides him to a barred fire escape door and they step out of the darkness and noise into the peace and relative seclusion of an alley. Back in the day, Kevin dimly recalls, alleys used to smell and be full of trash, graffiti and unsightly, shiftless vagrants. Now there’s a hotline number citizens can call to put a stop to that sort of antisocial behaviour.

César pushes him up against a stucco wall and raises Kevin’s chin with one hand.

“I guess there’s a good reason you’re not much of a drinker. Looks like there’s even less of you in there than usual.”

“César,” he says, his tongue thick and oddly uncooperative around the word’s sibilant parts. “I have to tell you. About the meeting.”

“What meeting?”

“With Lauren Mallard.”

“Oh yeah, _her_. She’s a real piece of work.”

“You know her?”

“She’s the vice president of StrexCorp, dummy. How can you not know that? Well, I guess you’re kind of out of the loop. Management probably figure the less you know about the horrifying truths behind your daily pep talks, the better.” César rubs Kevin’s shoulders in a brisk chafing motion, like drying off a swimmer or massaging a newborn kitten back to life. “What’s got you worked up, baby? She give you a hard time? You know you’re too valuable to them to lose. They’re all about continuity – getting someone else to do your job would spook the horses. Also, I read something in your files about a prophecy?”

“It’s not about me,” Kevin is affronted by the suggestion he might have done something to displease management. “She was asking me about _you_ , César.”

“Oh yeah?”

“What I thought of your practice. And your working habits, and attitude.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“The truth!”

César laughs. “Well, _shit_. I guess that explains it.”

“You didn’t expect me to lie to my employers, did you?”

“Hey, don’t get defensive–”

“You’re the one who should be defensive. If the company doesn’t think you’re doing your job–”

“Hey, it’s ok, baby. It is, I promise.” Kevin feels the warmth and pressure of César’s lips against his forehead. Hands frame his face, brushing back his hair; they feel cool and soothing in a distant sort of way. “Listen, I’m not some greenhorn or naive kid. I’ve been around. I worked for drug cartels – pulling out bullets and stitching up holes in people. I’ve worked for ambulance-chasing dipshit lawyers, and pill-popping douchebag financiers – and now for a corporation with a God complex. You know what they all have in common? They’re paranoid and think they’re way cleverer than they really are. Don’t worry, ok? I can take care of myself.”

“I’m not worried, César.” Kevin wishes he could explain – how there is no capacity for anxiety in him anymore and he no longer experiences the highs and lows that used to occupy so much of his attention and diminish his productivity. “That’s not it – worry is pointless.”

“Suuure.” César grins and grasps both his hands where they lie dangling by his sides. “It’s ok if you like me, Kevin – I won’t tell anyone how you’re all sweet on me.”

“You’re not taking this seriously.”

“Sure I am,” he laughs and squeezes Kevin’s hands. “Listen, they already called me in this afternoon. They want me to register for a bunch of what they’re calling ‘training seminars’ which I figure are some kind of brainwashing ordeal. Ugh, I hate those things – scopolamine makes me itch like crazy and pentothal makes me barf.” He sighs and looks away for a long moment, stroking up and down Kevin’s arms. “And they want me to sign some ridiculous fifty-year contract with more pages than the Bible.”

“Are you going to?”

“I don’t know. I said I had to take the weekend to decide. Go back into the outside world and get some perspective.” César sighs and takes a step back. “Listen, right now I just want to kick back, get hammered and not think about it for one night. So let’s go back in, huh? Drink and make out until we can’t feel our faces.”

“I barely feel anything at the best of times.”

César raises an eyebrow. “Then I guess I’m the one playing catch-up.”

*~*~*

Kevin wakes to a pounding headache. He hasn’t felt a pain like this in a long time – it’s precise and clear, not vague and muted like all his normal sensations. His face is mashed into crumpled bed linen that smells like César and when he shifts he feels a dull, throbbing pain in his ass and between his thighs something dry that was once undoubtedly something sticky. He waits until the world stops spinning and slowly heaves himself out of bed. He stumbles into the bathroom, picking up a trail of his own clothes on the way.

When he emerges, cleaner in body if not clearer in mind, he finds César in the kitchenette staring fixedly at the slow drip of the coffeemaker. Kevin makes a low groan of confusion, clutching the sides of his head. 

“Yeah,” says César. “I feel you.”

“What did we...?”

César makes a low sound of amusement. “You don’t remember? You were pretty insistent.”

“No, I...” Then Kevin does remember, clumsy kisses and struggling out of their clothes, shoving César down on the bed and clambering on top of him. César’s hands on his hips to hold him steady, belly slapping and jiggling against his thighs as Kevin worked himself up and down with a lot more enthusiasm than coordination. “ _Oh_.”

“There you go!” César grins as he pours out two cups of thick, black coffee. “Sometimes you can’t beat some sloppy drunk sex, you know? It’s a classic.”

“What time is it?”

“Little after nine.” When Kevin stiffens, César squeezes him and says: “don’t freak out – I jacked your organizer, they’re not expecting you in ‘til ten-thirty.” 

“Oh,” Kevin says stupidly. He can’t decide whether to tell César off or thank him, so he ends up saying nothing. When César pushes a mug across to him on the counter Kevin pulls himself up onto a stool, sniffing it cautiously. It isn’t _right_ – he spies a gallon bottle of mineral water on the countertop and makes the connection. 

“Go on, caffeine will do you good.” César stares at him for a long moment and crosses to the sink, then runs the water and fills a glass. “There,” he says, setting it in front of Kevin with a thunk, “have a chaser.” 

Kevin sips his coffee. “You don’t have to work today?”

“Nah, closed the clinic for ‘smudging and aura cleansing’, or whatever bullshit it was that Shelley came up with. I got to head out of town for a bit, remember?” César rubs the back of his neck and looks away.

“Are you coming back?”

“It’s not all up to me,” he replies, still apparently fascinated by a spot on the ceiling. “There’s other people I need to consult.”

“Your daughter?”

“Soph doesn’t really talk, so she can’t exactly tell me what she thinks about it all – at least, not in words. I guess her mom will have plenty to say though... she usually does.” He finally lowers his eyes and meets Kevin’s curious gaze. “Ah, I’m not good at this,” César touches his arm gently, fingertips closing around Kevin’s wrist and then rubbing up and down his inner arm. Kevin is surprised he can even feel it – he hasn’t had any water in over fourteen hours, so all the standard analgesics must be wearing off. 

“I want to be all smooth and classy when it comes to this stuff, but I’m... listen, I know it’s early days, we’re not... there’s no commitment. I just, I wanted to say that I’ve had a great time with you. Even the part where we got caught in a weird space-time anomaly and I wasn’t sure we’d make it back alive. And fuck, you know I have feelings for you, even if it’s not...” César sighs and runs his hand back through his chaotic hair. “I guess I’ll stop talking now. You’re doing that thing where you cock your head at me like a velociraptor.” 

“Ok,” Kevin says, hopping off the stool. “I really have to get to work.”

“Yeah. Hey, just c’mere and give me a hug goodbye.”

Kevin leans down and lets himself be folded into an embrace. César smells like alcohol fumes and the musty warmth of sleep. 

“Listen,” he says, his voice a low murmur against Kevin’s ear. “I want to tell you something, in case I don’t get another chance. Kev, whatever they did to you – and it was a lot – I know it didn’t go how they planned. They didn’t want you to remember how to be a person, but I kind of think you do. So hold on to that, ok? Hold on to it real tight.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Kevin says. There is a note of alarm sounding in his head, the same as the first time he ever met César – the hot, tightening sensation that says _no_ and _wrong_.

César squeezes him tightly and then pulls back, looking earnestly into his face. He isn’t smiling and Kevin just wishes he could remember what it means when someone’s cheeks fall and their eyebrows come close together. 

“It’s ok if you don’t understand,” César tells him. “Maybe it’s better.” He kisses Kevin softly on the lips. “You have a good day, ok baby?” 

“I always do,” Kevin replies. He grabs his organizer off the counter and heads briskly towards the door. Towards yet another sunny day in Desert Bluffs.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to finish everything and post it in one big chunk, but with the epilogue this was just getting way too long. So, enjoy this for now and I'll be back asap with the final, final installment!

César hefts a large white teddy bear onto his hip and rings the doorbell of the house that used to be his home.

He hears the click-clack of Beth’s footsteps and she opens the door with a jerk. “Jesus, what are you doing here? I thought you were dead.” 

César grins in what he hopes is a winning fashion. “Not yet.”

“What the hell is that ugly thing?” A strand of brassy blonde hair escapes from Beth’s carefully sculpted up-do and she smoothes it briskly back into place.

“Birthday present for Soph. It’s real soft, she’ll like it.”

Beth taps her French-tipped nails on the doorjamb. “If that’s for her birthday you’re either way late or way early.”

“I got to pass some kind of doorstep inquisition, or can I see my daughter?”

Beth throws her hands up and sighs, turning and striding how the hallway, teetering on her cork-heeled shoes. As César follows he notes the change in decor: the scuff-marked paint has been replaced with plush-looking textured wallpaper. He pauses by a picture frame that he remembers buying Beth as an anniversary present – it used to contain a photo of the two of them and newborn Sophia still wrapped in her blue hospital blanket. Now it’s a picture of Beth and some guy with salt and pepper hair and a cable-knit sweater. They appear to be on board a yacht.

The Beth in the picture looks different from the one that answered the door to him – her face is relaxed, her smile open.

“Hi Soph,” César calls from the living room doorway, “you watching your show? Is it a good one, honey?” 

Sophia doesn’t look up at his greeting and he is not sure whether she is aware of his presence or not. She is sitting on the floor in a nest of blankets, her arms wrapped around her legs, which are in turn pretzeled around each other in ways César cannot imagine is comfortable. As she gazes intently at the television, her eyes have that soft, wondering quality and one hand thumps rhythmically against her thigh – not hard enough for him to need to intervene, but it still makes him frown. She is still in her pajamas and her hair is tangled, her face shiny and unwashed. Beth is always as meticulous about Sophia’s appearance as she is about her own, so this tells him that something is wrong.

César sits down on the couch with a grunt, setting the bear on the cushion next to himself. He leans down and touches his daughter’s cheek, still murmuring to her as he brushes back the thick locks of frizzy hair. “How come she’s not in school today, she sick?”

“She’s been fitting again. The school said it was safer to keep her home until the doctors get her meds straightened out. Then this morning she had a big tantrum out of nowhere and it’s taken until now to get her calmed down.”

“Poor baby,” César says, stroking her cheek in a gentle, regular rhythm. “You don’t mean to give your mom a hard time, huh? Huh?”

“Huh,” Sophia repeats. 

Beth is bustling around the room, tidying and picking up discarded toys, radiating frustration and annoyance. “Look, you can’t do this, César. You know how important routine is for her, I don’t need to add you wandering in and out every few months and getting her all worked up.”

He looks up, sharply. “So what are you saying, I can’t see my own kid now?”

“Oh yeah, she’s your kid when you feel like showing up with some ugly toy. She’s not your kid through all the early mornings and the sleepless nights, though, is she? She’s _my_ kid then.”

“Oh here we go, the Saint Elizabeth the Martyr routine. You’re always like this – it’s always all or nothing with you. Listen, I’ve been busting my ass at this new corporate job and I don’t hear you complain any about the checks I’ve been sending your way. 

“I don’t need your money, Cez. In case you haven’t noticed, I have a job and a fiancé and we’re doing just fine!” The high pitch of Beth’s last words causes Sophia to turn her head and let out an anguished yell, so the rest of their argument has to be conducted in low-pitched whispers.

“Since when has this fiancé been in the picture? I never heard of him – what’s his name, even?”

“His name is Mike. He’s been in the picture long enough, that’s all you need to know.”

“He looks like a preppy douchebag if you ask me.”

“Nobody did ask you. He’s a good man – he provides for me and Soph and it’s literally none of your goddamn business! 

“Since when do you even want to get married?”

“How would you know? You never asked!”

“I…” César blinks at her for a moment in perplexity. “Did you want me to?”

“Hell, no! You weren’t that kind of guy, anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Geez Cez, you know as well as I do. What we had... it was fun to start with. You’re someone who knows how to have a good time. But you’re not... not the marrying kind.” The look she gives him is almost pitying and César feels his neck go hot with anger and humiliation. Before he can say anything else Sophia grabs his arm and points it, making an urgent sound. “What, honey? Use your words.”

“Her show’s over,” Beth says, crossing to the TV and turning it off. “She doesn’t like the one that comes on after.” She leans over the coffee table to gather together a heap of books into a single pile – they all have distinctly uncatchy titles: _Severe Autism: Evidence-Based Interventions; Spectrum Disorders: A Transactional Developmental Perspective; A Curriculum of Behavioral Treatment and Management Strategies_. César sometimes wonders if Beth believes she is studying for some kind of test; as if one day a good fairy or an angel will float down on a shaft of sunlight and tell her that if she can just prove she understands every minute detail of Sophia’s condition, she’ll be rewarded with a magical key to unlock their daughter’s mind. 

“Alright kiddo,” César puts his arm around Sophia and pulls her up. “Come on – only movie stars get to be in their pajamas past noon.”

*~*~*

He gets her washed and dressed with only a minimum of struggling and being smacked in the mouth once with a flailing arm as he tries to brush her teeth. She runs off towards the back yard with the comb still stuck in her hair, but overall César is prepared to chalk it up as a victory. He follows her out and shades his eyes against the sun as he watches her climbing up into the wooden playhouse, her Mary Jane shoes clattering on the planks.

“Soph, whatcha doing up there, huh?” he calls, not expecting her to answer. Questions have a long way to go to reach her – César sometimes thinks of it like they have some really bad cell reception. 

He climbs the steps to the platform and sits down next to her where she has wedged herself into a corner, her cheek resting against a sun-bleached plank as she gazes out through the gap where one of the other slats has fallen away. Her mouth is slack and half-open, her eyes darting and bright. César cranes his neck to see what has caught her interest. The sun is shining down through the leaves of the cottonwood tree that hangs above the playhouse, creating a haze of dappled light that changes with the breeze like the shifting patterns of a kaleidoscope. He smiles, and then it occurs to him with a sudden painful pang that there really is no being with Sophia except this. With her he cannot adopt the pretense that phone calls or emails or postcards mean anything. There is only this: warm, animal closeness, the feeling of her breath on his cheek, the bump of her restless limbs. 

“Soph,” he says, brushing the backs of his fingers against hers. “Sophia. Your old dad loves you, you know that? I do, baby. I guess me just saying that doesn’t mean much to you. Maybe it doesn’t even do you any good, but there it is.”

“I’-is,” she mumbles around the index finger hooked in the corner of her mouth.

They sit on in silence for a while, César enjoying the play of sunlight and shadow across his closed eyelids, until suddenly he hears Beth’s voice calling him from the direction of the house.

“Cez, come get your phone! The damn thing won’t stop ringing and it’s driving me crazy!”

César sighs and heaves himself up with one hand on the edge of the slide. When he makes his way back to the living room he sees his phone lying face-down on the coffee table. It is making an unholy wailing sound that sounds nothing like his ring tone. He could almost be sure that it is not vibrating, but _writhing_. Gingerly, he reaches out to answer.

“Oh, hi!” says Kevin. César has almost forgotten how high and breathless his voice is. “I thought I’d never get through to you.”

“Hi Kevin,” César is torn between awkwardness and the simple, puppy-dog joy that leaps up in his chest. “Uh... how are things?” 

“You sound strange,” Kevin says. “Like there’s no smile in your voice. Why aren’t you smiling?”

“It’s not mandatory here.” 

Kevin gives a scandalized little gasp. “Oh. O-oh!”

“What’s up?” César asks, flopping down on the couch next to the oversized teddy bear.

“Nothing, really. I just wanted to know when you’re coming back. Are you aware you’ve missed 1.6 working days already?”

“That little, huh?” César scratches his chin.

“Don’t make jokes like that, César, you’re not funny.”

“I’m not?”

“Are you on your way back?”

“No, I’m... I still haven’t decided, Kevin. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”

“It can’t be that difficult. What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t know. Insight, I guess.”

“Have you made a decision tree?”

“No.”

“You don’t sound like you’re trying very hard.”

“Kevin...”

“You’ve never called me that before.” He almost sounds aggrieved. “Something’s wrong. Don’t you want to come back?”

“It’s the rest of my life, do you understand that?” César leans forward, voice tightening with exasperation. “I’ve always been able to leave before – take off for the next city, the next job, next... love interest. Whatever I do now, it’s for keeps, right? I’m scared, Kev. What if I choose the wrong thing? Or what if I go all in and I still fuck it up and there’s nothing and nowhere to go?”

“Ugh, you waste so much time on the future. You can’t earn pre-overtime, you know – not since we had to slaughter all those deer.”

“Wh– no, you know what? forget it… I don’t want to know.” César sighs heavily and drapes his free arm across the back of the couch. He looks up at the pictures on the mantlepiece, the family photos which have been updated to reflect his absence. Beth smiles in them; a warm, intimate expression he has not seen in person for years. “Hey, you want to hear another story about my past? 

“If you can make it quick – the weather will be over soon.”

“Well, I used to believe in soul mates. I used to think I must be like a puzzle piece and there was someone out there whose edges would line up with mine and we’d just click together and it’d be perfect. That person would _perfect_ me, you know? So when I met someone I’d just fling myself into it, ‘cause I figured they’d be the one, or they wouldn’t, and I should just give it the old college try, you know? If it didn’t work out – no big deal, it wasn’t meant to be. I loved a lot of people, I made a lot of friends. I guess I hurt a lot of people, too.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Another person can’t make you perfect, only the Smiling God can do that.”

“Just... just listen a minute. I guess I’m thinking aloud here, ok? I’m trying to understand... to know if...” he sighs. “Beth said I was just a good-time guy – that stung my pride but maybe it’s fair. Now I want to know if I can really make it for the long haul. I don’t... believe any more that someone who’s perfect for me in every way is going to come along. Maybe it’s work and compromise, just like the grown-ups say, you know?”

“I _don’t_ know, César – I’m barely following what you’re talking about at all.”

“Ok, ok, Kev,” he laughs, his breath rattling the phone’s mic. “I know you’re not good with this stuff – it’s probably like I’m speaking another language to you. But look, if I... if I came back, would you want to try to make it work? You and me?”

“Make what work?”

“A relationship, Kev. You and me being boyfriends, falling in love, maybe living together one day.”

“I could do the first part and the last part. I don’t know about the middle – I have no frame of reference for that.” 

“Ok, I guess that’s–”

“Oh César!” Kevin breaks in with a yelp of excitement, “I almost forgot – I wanted to tell you something strange.”

“What’s that?”

“I checked my monthly performance reports portfolio. Turns out I’m _up_ on last time.”

“Good job, I guess – but why is that strange?”

“Because I met you, silly. I thought you were a distraction and a time-thief.”

“But I’m not?”

“You’re not! That’s crazy, isn’t it? I looked at the daily stats and it turns out I was actually working _harder_ before and after our dates – you know, to make up for lost time – and somehow I got ahead of myself!” 

“So I’m what – an incentive scheme?”

“Right!”

César feels a fond smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “That’s great, Kev. Congratulations.”

“I have to go… the weather–”

“Sure. I’ll let you know what I decide. Until next time, I guess.”

Kevin laughs, then gives him the warm, radio voice: “until next time, Dr. César.”

*~*~* 

As Kevin is driving past César’s apartment one evening he notices a light on in the living room. He parks and ascends the front steps; when he presses the buzzer he hears the sound of the speaker rattling and then the buzz that announces the door is unlocked. 

He mounts the stairs and knocks on the door, which is immediately opened by a large, fair-haired, muscle-bound man in cut-off denim shorts. “Oh,” says either Sven or Björn. “It’s you.”

“What are you doing here?” Kevin asks.

“Boss said I could use the place until the lease runs out.”

“Don’t you have your own apartment?”

“Yes, but I have a roommate. And sometimes my entertaining can get a bit... loud.” Sven-or-Björn steps back from the doorway and gestures for Kevin to enter. “Did you want to pick up something?”

“Not exactly,” Kevin steps into the apartment anyway, curious to see how it has been left. The living room is exactly as he last saw it: strewn with half-unpacked boxes. Just like their owner, César’s belongings seem trapped in a state of indecision between staying and going. Kevin finds the room frustrating to look at: “sooner murder an infant in its cradle than leave a task unfinished” – that’s what his grandmother used to say.

“You don’t think he’s coming back,” Kevin says, turning to regard the other man. 

“Hmm?” Sven-or-Björn has taken out his phone and is texting rapidly; he sits down on the couch with an impatient sigh.

“‘Until the lease runs out’, you said. You don’t think César is coming back.”

“Has he told you something different?” 

“He just told me he doesn’t know yet.”

Sven-or-Björn raises his head and fixes Kevin with his startling blue-grey stare. “I have found people in this country are extremely indirect. They often say ‘maybe’ when they mean ‘no.’”

“Oh,” says Kevin. “Well. Won’t he miss his things? Perhaps I should ship them back to him. It might take quite a while to collect enough blood for the UPS sacrifice though. Unless the office wants to have a collection.”

He wanders over to the side table to discover that César has taken his battered box of albums with him, but left behind the record player. Kevin lifts the dusty perspex cover to find a record has been left on the turntable – the one Kevin put on when César asked him to pick one. He presses the button that sets it spinning and lifts the armature, pulling it into position before setting the needle crackling on the vinyl. As he listens to the opening strains of the music he wonders if César took his collection of sex toys, too. Together those boxes would probably be enough; a little cutting from the stem of his old life that would be just enough for him to transplant and start anew.

“You like this kind of music?” Sven-or-Björn asks; his clipped intonation makes everything he says sound like an accusation.

Kevin turns his head. “I don’t know. I don’t really think much about the weather once it ends.”

“I like electronic. Something with a beat.”

“I know. I saw you dancing at the bar.”

“Oh yes?”

Kevin turns off the record player at the switch, the record spins slower and slower, growing more distorted and mournful until it finally stops. He looks up, a thoughtful expression coming over his features. “The person you’re waiting for – it’s for sex, is that right?”

“Among other things.”

“If you like, we could try.”

Sven-or-Björn raises his straight, fair eyebrows. “You really want to?”

“César is the only person I remember being with. If he’s not coming back I should try to find other sources of relaxation and pleasure. I’ve recently found it makes me more productive, you see.”

“I suppose that makes sense – but to be honest, you’re not really my type.”

This reaction puzzles Kevin – César was absurdly aroused by everything he said or did, and so Kevin had naturally assumed he must be extremely attractive to other men. “Oh, why not?”

“I like guys who are slimmer than you – fitter.”

“Oh! Oh well. I don’t know if it makes a difference or not, but I’m wearing pink lace underwear. César said it would look good on me, so I bought some.” Kevin tugs down the side of his pants to give the other man a glimpse. 

Sven-or-Björn rubs his cleanly-shaved chin. “You like taking orders? You know, sexual submission?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t really tried.”

“You like pain?” Before Kevin can reply, Sven-or-Björn tuts and provides his own reply: “you’re a native of this place. You must have very poor pain perception.” He seems to mean this as a criticism.

“That’s true. However, César says I’m good at oral sex. Would you like me to try on you?”

Sven-or-Björn considers it for a long moment. “Well, why not?” He leans back on the couch, flicks open the button on the front of the denim shorts and pulls down the zipper. Kevin crosses to him and sinks down onto his knees on the carpet. The other man’s penis is much larger than Kevin was expecting and there is no hair at its base. In fact, Sven-or-Björn’s whole body is shaven, smooth and defined like something molded in silicone – a king-sized sex toy. Kevin is pleased by this discovery – he can’t imagine this man would want to invade the corners of his life; every interaction would be brief and businesslike. 

As Sven-or-Björn strokes himself to hardness, his arm movement taut and precise like a piston, Kevin leans in and contemplates the organ in front of his face as he would a submarine sandwich or supersize burger, considering how best to get it in his mouth. He swallows it down in cautious sections, drawing back each time before sucking it in deeper. Sven-or-Björn doesn’t make any noise or provide direction, and Kevin finds his own enthusiasm flagging: it’s not _difficult_ , exactly, but he’s not aroused in the least – he feels as if he’s performing a party trick. As he slides his hand up the other man’s stomach and feels the defined ridges of muscle where he wants there to be soft, generous flesh, a worrying thought occurs to Kevin: perhaps people aren’t easily interchangeable when it comes to sex. 

When a few minutes yield no discernible improvement in the situation, he pulls back and frowns at the unflagging erection as a problem he has failed to solve.

“I’m sorry,” Kevin says, spreading his hands to indicate their situation. “This isn’t really doing anything for me. I don’t think you’re my type either.”

The other man nods. “I didn’t think so.”

“I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

“No problem.”

Kevin climbs to his feet and crosses to the kitchenette where he pours himself a glass of water and drinks it down. He hears Sven-or-Björn moving about, the burr of a zipper raising again. 

“Have you tried asking him to come back?”

“Who? Oh, you mean César? No. He said he has to consult other people.”

“But maybe you get a vote, you know?” 

“You really think so?”

“He seemed very smitten with you – I’m sure he’d like to hear you want him back.”

A sudden knock at the door makes Sven-or-Björn’s head swivel around. “Come in!” he barks.

The door opens and a tall figure clatters in on platform heels. The man’s dark hair is sweaty and flattened where it has been hidden under a wig all day; one seaweed eyelash is still waving, but the other is incongruously missing.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t get away from work and I didn’t get time to change–”

“Silence,” Sven-or-Björn says in a soft, cutting voice.

The other man closes his mouth with a gasp and sinks to his bare knees on the grubby floor. He raises his kohl-lined eyes in a look Kevin cannot parse – is that fear or excitement?

“The man over there could not please me,” Sven-or-Björn says, taking the kneeling figure’s chin in his large hand. “I am not in the mood for further disappointment, do you understand?”

Kevin, for his part, does not understand, not wholly – but he knows now it’s not something he wants. He politely excuses himself and heads back to work.

*~*~*

César opens a squeaky gate and walks up a path to a shotgun house painted a fresh mint green. He knocks on the screen door and hears a dog begin to bark in the next yard over. A woman comes to the door and looks at him quizzically through the netting. She is around forty years old and her hair is done in perky, twisted locs. She wears high-waisted mom jeans over her wide hips and a flower-printed blouse. A dish towel hangs over one of her shoulders. It’s so normal it almost seems surreal to César.

“Are you lost?” she asks.

“I don’t think so. Yvette, I want to talk to you about Kevin.”

Her eyes widen. “Why, what has he done?”

César takes the creased photograph from his shirt pocket and holds it up so she can see it.

“Oh,” she says, her face turning ashen. “Oh God. How did you find me?”

“Wasn’t that hard. You didn’t change your name, you left in your own car. Don’t worry, I’m not a Strex drone – I’m not here to bundle you in the back of a van. My name is César. I’m a friend of Kevin’s and I just want to find out what happened to him.”

“Then I guess you’d better come in.”

*~*~*

Steam rises from their coffee cups as they sit at a wobbly-legged kitchen table. 

“It’s so strange...” she says after a long silence. “God, Desert Bluffs. I think about it all the time, but it seems so... unlikely. Sometimes I tell myself I hallucinated it all. That’s easier to believe.”

“You didn’t grow up there?”

“No. I can’t say I know how I even got there. I went to college out in Phoenix and I was driving from there, or to there – maybe it was spring break? I really can’t say. But I was driving, and I stopped in town for gas. Then I thought it was getting late and I’d just get a motel for the night. The next morning I had breakfast at the All Day Sunlight Diner and they had a ‘help wanted’ sign. I don’t know why, but I just got up and took the sign out of the window, then I asked to speak to the manager. It gets to you, that place. It draws you in.”

“This was before Strex, right?”

She nods. “Desert Bluffs was odd, even then. Like something out of _Leave it to Beaver_ , you know? White picket fences and people tipping their hats and saying ‘howdy’. It was weirdly charming.” She twists a lock of hair around her finger and looks fond, younger perhaps, as the long-carried lines of tension in her face uncrease. “I worked at the diner and one day in walks Kevin. It’s a simple story from then on in – he’d come in pretty regular, we’d talk. For the longest time I kind of assumed he was gay – but that was my frame of reference, you know? Where I come from men who want people to think they’re interested in women don’t wear heels and paint their nails ice-cream shades.”

“He used to wear heels?”

“He doesn’t anymore?”

“Not that I’ve seen.” 

There’s a pause while Yvette seems lost in her memories. “Anyway, he got around to asking me out, and that was that. We had a few good years – really good years. He was... well, he wasn’t like anyone I’d ever known before. He always had this wicked sense of humour, but under all that he was so gentle, so hard-working and just... decent. He was brave, too – stupidly brave, I thought. He’d go out at all hours to listen to people’s stories. He worked in newspaper then – back when people still bought newspapers. He never buried the lede, I guess that’s what made them notice him. Made them want to break him.”

“StrexCorp?”

She rubs her forehead with the heel of her hand. “I guess I should go back to the start – what I can remember of it. There was some building work on the edge of the town – that new housing development – what was it called?” 

“Silver Sands?”

She nods. “I think they disturbed something out there in the desert. Something a lot older than the town, something older than humanity itself, maybe.”

“A Smiling God?”

“Kev interviewed the construction crew in the hospital – the ones that survived. They said they found a cave system, and inside one of the main chambers there was a bunch of teeth – a big, huge pile of them. A mountain of teeth. They brought some back and scientists ran tests – carbon dated them. Some of them were thousands of years old.”

“Creepy.”

“Beyond creepy. A lot of people thought it must have been the work of some big prehistoric thing – some monster from long ago. But why would a creature like that eat up all the other bones and leave the teeth? Kev had a theory – he thought it was the work of humans. He thought they were an offering; an offering to something they were afraid of. He found some stuff in the city archives but no-one would listen. A lot of the construction workers died – radiation poisoning, they said. What Kevin saw didn’t look like radiation poisoning. More like something burned them out from the inside.”

César feels a cold, crawling sensation up his spine. “So how did Strex come into it? What does a corporation have to do with some... what – prehistoric god?”

Yvette closes her eyes and is silent for a long moment – so long that César thinks she won’t go on with the story. “The thing about evil is that it can’t do anything by itself. It needs humans to do its work.”

“Is that what you think the Smiling God is – pure evil? A demon, maybe?”

“Maybe,” Yvette says, opening her eyes and letting them track across the ceiling. “It’s a thing that wants to be in the world. It doesn’t belong here, but that’s what it wants.”

“Maybe it’s lonely.”

She gives a short, bitter laugh. “Maybe. I used to wonder: why Desert Bluffs? Is it ‘cause that place is already screwy in space and time, so it’s easy for something out of our world to climb on in through? Or was Desert Bluffs a real, normal place at one time, and whatever that thing is… it warped it? I spent a lot of time pondering that but never got anywhere near an answer.”

“What is Strex then,” César presses, “where did that come from?”

“It’s a corporation.” Yvette gets up with a look of resolution and goes to a drawer. She pulls out a battered pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Then she sits down again with a scrape of the chair legs on the faded linoleum, takes out a cigarette and taps it on the table. “I went back to college a while back. Law school. Had to drop out again because of financial reasons, but...” her thumbnail rasps against the lighter and the flame illuminates the hollows of her face. She inhales and exhales slowly, a thick stream of pale grey smoke. “A corporation is a body that exists only on paper. You can’t kick a corporation, and you can’t kill it – it’s immortal. It has no soul, and it has no conscience, but what it does have is rights. In fact, in today’s America, a corporation has more legal rights than a human being – it makes whoever or whatever is behind it _bulletproof_. I think that’s what’s so terrible about Strex: it’s a great idea. Makes you kind of wonder why no other god thought of it first.”

“It can’t just have sprung up fully-formed though, right?”

She shakes her head. “It started as a healthcare provider. An office appears with a temporary sign, a banner advertising new cheap dental plans. We should have fucking known, right?” With a look of disgust Yvette puts out the cigarette in her coffee cup. It hisses and leaves an acrid scent in the air. “‘DenPlan Desert Bluffs: a StrexCorp concern.’ Pretty soon everything was a StrexCorp concern.” 

The screen door creaks and slams there are footsteps in the hallway. A tall, rangy youth of around fifteen years old lopes into the kitchen with a backpack slung over one shoulder. 

“Hey,” he says, a jerky nod towards César, his seeming indifference belied by a glint of curiosity. 

“This is César,” Yvette says, her eyes darting between them. “He knew your father before he passed, Kev.”

“Oh yeah?” Kevin Jr. yanks open the refrigerator and grabs a can of soda. His hair is clipped short and decorated with chevron patterns where the hair meets the back of his neck. His clothes are a riot of sports labels: a t-shirt emblazoned with the Nike tick, Adidas sweatpants, colourful hi-top Jordan sneakers. 

“You look a lot like him,” César says, wondering whether a love of logos can be genetic. 

“Yeah. Mom tells me that.” He gives a complicated look that contains flashes of awkwardness, yearning and anger and turns his face away from them, setting off towards the back rooms. The timber frame of the house shakes with his heavy footfalls and slamming of doors. 

Yvette winces. “Teenagers.”

“I didn’t realise it was so long since you left.”

“Time passes differently there.” She glances at him sharply. “You think it’s wrong of me to tell him his dad is dead?”

César shrugs. “You want to protect your kid. You don’t want him to go looking for Desert Bluffs.”

“I didn’t tell Kevin – Kevin Senior – didn’t tell him I was pregnant. He wanted to stay in the Bluffs – he thought he could help protect people. I thought he was wrong, but I didn’t want to drag him away. I know he would always have regretted it – abandoning his home to that... thing. Besides, before I left I wasn’t even sure I was going to keep the baby, but after...” she laces her fingers together and squeezes her hands tight, as if in prayer. “I guess I wanted at least a part of Kevin to escape.”

“I don’t know if it’s comforting or not, but he doesn’t remember anything about that time. That picture I showed you – he doesn’t even recognise _himself_.”

“He doesn’t talk about me, not ever?”

“No. He talks about someone called ‘Vanessa’ sometimes. She was a friend of his at the station, I guess. I’m pretty sure she’s dead, though he doesn’t always tell it that way.”

“What does he look like now?”

César pulls out his phone and scrolls through his photos. It takes him a while to find one of Kevin with his clothes on, but eventually he finds one he took the other night at the bar, a selfie he took with his arm slung around Kevin’s neck, dragging him close enough to kiss his cheek. Kevin has his eyes closed so he looks more human than usual.

Yvette’s hand trembles as it goes to her mouth. “Why did you come here?”

“I just wanted to know what he was like back then.”

“Why do you need to know that?”

“I’m trying to decide something. My future, I guess.”

“How does knowing his past help you decide that?”

“It helps me measure how much of him is left. If it’s enough... enough to work with.”

Yvette nods, her hand still clasped over her mouth; a tear runs down her cheek. César pushes back his chair and rises.

“Thanks for talking to me, Yvette. I won’t tell anyone where you are. You and Junior take care, ok?” He puts his hand on her shoulder and when she doesn’t look up he shows himself out.

He makes it back onto the street and all the way down the block to his car before he hears a voice calling out to him: “Hey, hey asshole! Caesar!”

César turns to see Kevin Jr. standing panting on the sidewalk, his face screwed up into righteous indignation. It is strange to see such expressiveness on features so like his father’s. “Can I help you, buddy?” 

“I’m not your buddy. What did you say to my mom? Why is she crying?”

“We were just talking about the past – I guess we got into some painful territory. I didn’t mean to upset her, I’m sorry.”

The teen seems wrong-footed by this explanation. He stares at César for a long moment before changing tack to demand: “so do I really look like him?” 

“Quite a lot, yeah. He has – had – that same little beauty spot.” César taps just below his bottom lip. 

“It’s a mole, not a beauty spot.”

“Sure it is, champ.”

Kevin Jr. wraps a long-fingered hand around peeling fence post and scuffs his toe against a clump of dried grass. “Mom talks about him like he was a saint. Every time I mess up it’s all ‘your father wouldn’t have done that’, ‘your father wouldn’t have said that’.” He looks up at César as if seeking his word of confirmation or denial. 

“I don’t think anyone’s a saint, not even those guys on the church wall.”

“What was he like then?”

“Funny, stylish, smart,” César scratches his chin. “Stubborn as all hell.”

“Yeah?” the expressions flicker again: confusion, awkwardness, guarded interest.

It was a high school guidance counselor who first pointed out to César his ‘poor impulse control’ and he’s old and wise enough now to recognise that bad-dog-straining-on-a-leash feeling that happens just before he does something inordinately stupid. Still, he allows himself to think: _what if_? What if he tore down that safety net of lies and half-truths that Yvette has so carefully constructed, and just told the kid the truth? What if he offered to take him back to Desert Bluffs?

( _What_ , says the second thought – the one that often comes too late – _so you can tear apart someone else’s family to patch up your own?_ ) 

He pulls the battered photograph out of his shirt pocket. “I think he’d want you to have this, Kevin.”

“Kev,” the teenager replies absently, thumb smoothing out the creased edges of the picture. “No-one calls me Kevin.” 

*~*~*

When Kevin finishes his final preparations for the following day’s broadcast, he pulls his organizer out of his pocket to check what his next scheduled task is. A box blinks on his screen announcing ‘!!NEW ADDITION TO WORKLOAD!! SYNC Y/N?’. He taps ‘Y’ and waits for the screen to refresh, then eagerly scrolls down the updated day plan. A red-coloured box has inserted itself between the two cooler pinks of ‘broadcast preparation’ and ‘atonal chanting in break room’. The new task box reads ‘meeting at the ossuary’. Its start time is in ten minutes, so Kevin springs out of his chair and grabs his keys. He proceeds down the corridor at a jog, leap-frogging over the cowering figure of a new intern. 

His drive takes him through New Town and into Silver Sands, then into the desert scrubland beyond. At the foot of Red Mesa is a cave; near its mouth two black sedans sit parked at parallel angles. Kevin’s tires crunch over the bleached ribcage of a dead buzzard as he lets his own car come to rest between them. 

Kevin has to duck to enter the cave. The tunnel starts off narrow and then abruptly widens into a large, oblong chamber. The soft stone walls have been embedded with teeth, some yellowed with age, some shiny and new, but all human. Once this chamber was all haphazard and messy, the offerings not properly displayed, but now it is glorious, Kevin thinks. In the chamber’s back wall is a hole about the diameter of a fist; no-one knows how deep it goes or where it comes out. As Kevin stares at it, the bright thing in his head dilates and all his thoughts fragment and scatter: _mouth, womb, mother, home_.

Kevin is not alone in the chamber – rather, he is the last to the meeting. There are two figures in suits: a man who is not tall, and a man who is not short. Then there is Lauren Mallard, wearing a flashlight on her head. All three of them are wearing welding goggles. 

At the chamber’s centre there is a raised plateau of rock – a mesa in miniature – its edges worn smooth and ergonomic by the procession of so many offerings. A prone figure lies upon it; in a deep, dish-shaped groove above his head lies a single golden tooth; a right bicuspid, patched over where once it was cracked by a beloved’s fist.

“Oh,” Kevin says. “Oh, César. You didn’t try to negotiate your contract, did you?”

The figure does not reply, probably because he is only semi-conscious. Kevin leans over and pushes the man’s cheek to make his head loll to the other side; his pupils are extremely dilated and the sclera of the left eye is pink where a vessel has burst. A bright river of blood bubbles and streams from the corner of his mouth, agitated by his laboured breathing. Kevin sits down and props César’s head up on his knee, letting the blood run out and not obstruct his airway. He brushes his fingers through sticky, matted, silver-streaked curls.

“You shouldn’t have done this,” he says. He is looking at César and not at the person he is actually addressing, but there seems to be no confusion.

“Who are you to tell me what decisions to make?” Lauren demands.

“Well, Lauren, if you had asked, I could have told you the Smiling God wouldn’t accept him. This was simply a waste of everyone’s time.”

Lauren clenches her teeth and begins to pace in agitation. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. It flowed into him and out again, like water through a sieve. “

“Oh, I think you have seen something like it before.” He gives her a bright, patronizing smile and she flinches. “You shouldn’t need those goggles, Lauren.”

“Who is this man?” she demands, voice tremulous with rage. “Why did he come here? What does he want with us?”

Kevin watches as César convulses and vomits blood down the line of his inseam. “He came because he was called; he was called because he could further our interests. That is how everyone comes to Desert Bluffs.”

“He’s dangerous. He wants to come and go as he pleases. He has allies elsewhere and he knows...” she gestures wildly, emphatically, “ _things_.”

“I don’t think I care for your tone, Lauren. You know, it’s almost as if you’re implying that the Smiling God makes mistakes. That’d be crazy, right?” Kevin chuckles to himself, pets César’s head as the other man groans as he shudders back towards consciousness. “Of course I’m right.”

Lauren whips out her phone and dials a number. Tinny hawk shrieking noises are heard on the other end. “Yes,” she says into the mouthpiece. “yes, yes, no, no. He’s here. The Voice.” She taps her foot and nods with her whole body like one of those wooden crane toys. “He says – but it _can’t_ – alright. Yes.”

*`*~*

Time strobes for César.

Off: darkness.

On: two figures dragging him, pain in his shoulder joints.

Off.

On: car engine rumbling soggy; rough fabric of car seat upholstery under his cheek. Someone has been bleeding on it. Kevin is talking but he can’t be sure whether it’s in person or on the radio.

Off.

On: two bigger figures, more arm pain, his heels dragging over stone steps. The whirr of an elevator, then the rough bounce of his body hitting a mattress.

Off.

On: someone with a helmet of dark, shiny hair leans over him, there is a bright, cold stinging in his mouth and when he twists, large, implacable hands pin down his shoulders a voice lightly reprimands him in a blank, uninflected Scandinavian accent. He tastes cotton and when the hands roll him onto his side a river of spit and blood trickle into a waiting stainless steel bowl. 

Off.

On. The room is dark, sheets pinned around all the windows. The air is thick with sweet marijuana smoke. 

“It’s not a ghost,” says Chet. “It’s just a robe on the back of the door. I know, I was confused at first, too.” He giggles and closes his eyes; César does the same. 

This time he doesn’t fall immediately into unconsciousness, it’s something more like drifting to sleep. When he wakes again the room – his bedroom – is otherwise unoccupied, though he can hear the sound of the TV coming from the other room. He is incredibly thirsty, but when he tries to sit up, he only manages to lift his head off the bed and falls back again with a yelp.

“Hey,” he calls out hoarsely. “Anyone there?”

Footsteps come and a shiny mop of hair appears around the doorframe.

“Hey boss. How’re those stitches holding up?”

“Jesus, Ren, they let _you_ stitch me up? Do I still have both my kidneys?”

The side of her mouth twitches. “For now.” 

“Can I have some water?”

“It’ll cost ya,” Ren disappears for a minute and he hears the sound of the tap running, then she appears with a pint glass.

“No bottled stuff?”

“This stuff’s loaded with painkillers, might as well take the free hit.”

César shifts himself higher on the pillows so he won’t choke on the water, takes the glass and manages to get it to his mouth without spilling. His throat is so dry the liquid almost seems to scrape it on the way down. He swallows reflexively over and over until the whole glass is gone, then wipes his mouth with his arm and notices how very covered in blood he is. Ren takes the glass and helps him struggle to an upright position and then heave himself out of bed. By clinging on to shelves and doorways he is able to slowly shuffle his way to the bathroom.

“Where’s Kev?” he asks when he returns, toweling off his damp hair while still using his free hand to grasp for supports.

“At work. He said he’d stop by later,” Ren is sitting in the visitor’s chair and flipping through a magazine.

César lowers himself back onto the bed with a grunt. “He either saved my life or had me almost killed. I’m not sure which.”

“Probably best not to ask, not unless you’re sure you want to know the answer.” She uncrosses her legs and leans forward. “So. I hear you had an elder god in your head. What was that like?”

César rubs his temples. “Like someone put my brain in a paint mixer with a gallon of bleach. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Seems like it wouldn’t take, at least that’s what Kevin said. I wonder why. Maybe you need to be a native or something.” 

“Maybe.”

“So looks like we should cancel that ad for your replacement, huh?”

“I guess so.”

“You come back just for him?” Ren jerks her chin in a way that somehow suggests she means Kevin.

“Not just for him, at least I don’t think. It kind of feels right here. I know that sounds crazy.” 

Ren closes her eyes. “Did you see the planet?”

“What?”

“I thought about it. Why and I how I came here, where I was before. I don’t really remember. When I try to access those memories this thing swims into view. A huge planet – dark, lit by no sun.”

“Maybe it’s not a planet.”

“Maybe.” She nods and gets to her feet. “Listen, there’s some people waiting for me to jab needles into them. You think you can survive on your own until your boyfriend gets home?”

César shrugs. “I can give it a try.”

“Oh yeah. Head Office called – something about an updated contract. You have to go in on Monday. They didn’t sound too pleased about it.”

“Fantastic,” César says, falling back to sleep as the analgesics lap over him in waves.

*~*~*

He wakes again to a tall figure shadowed in the doorway. “Well hello there, lazy-bones,” it says brightly, revealing a half-moon of strangely shaped and angled teeth. “I hope you don’t plan on malingering.”

“Hi,” César smiles. “Hi baby.”

“It’s so dark in here.”

“I know, it’s great. Leave the curtains,” he pats the space next to him on the mattress. “C’mere.”

Kevin crosses to the foot of the bed, then surprises César by starting to undress, tossing his clothes onto the visitor’s chair. He gets down to his underwear (which César notices, even in the low light, is pink) before sliding under the covers and up against him.

“Hi,” César gives a dopey smile and strokes back his hair. 

“You said that already.” Kevin slides an arm over his waist and seems to be working out the best angle to squeeze him. “Oh!” he says. “Oh, you showered.” The falling intonation makes it sound as if he is disappointed.

“Yeah, that a problem? You liked me better covered in dried blood?”

“Mmm. Last night I lay up behind you and licked the little patch of it behind your ear. It was lovely.”

“That’s... disturbing, but also kind of hot.”

Kevin narrows his eyeholes as he leans in and pushes his fingertip against César’s upper lip to reveal the gap in his teeth. 

“Ow, careful!”

Kevin tisks as he presses his nail against the gum-line. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” César mumbles around his fingertip. “Whistle my s-sounds, I guess.”

“You can’t just leave your smile incomplete. Why don’t you take one of my teeth, since I have so many extra? The dentist could do an implant. Wouldn’t that be _intimate_ – you wearing a part of me in your mouth?”

“Uh, that’s one word for it, I guess.”

Kevin lets out a happy-sounding sigh and cuddles closer. “I looked at some listings today in the uptown area.”

“Listings for what?”

“For an apartment, silly.”

“You’re moving?”

“Both of us are. Halfway between my workplace and yours, it’s the most fair and efficient solution.”

“Uh. So you’re... wow, you really jump in there with both feet, don’t you?”

“You said you wanted us to live together.”

“I meant... you know. Unspecified future time.”

“César, you know what my grandmother used to say? ‘Indecision is just another word for laziness’.” 

“Did she, though?” César wonders aloud.

“Besides, your things are already part-packed.”

“Ok, sure. Let’s just... throw all those eggs into one basket and hope it doesn’t end in one big murder-suicide omelet.” César finds he is a lot calmer than he thought he would be at this prospect, but then he is full of tap-water opioids.

Kevin gives him a longer squeeze. “I’ll synch our schedules in the morning.”


	7. Epilogue

The chemicals are burning his scalp in a way that reassures him they are doing their job and the shellac has long-since dried on his nails, so Kevin turns his attention to _the Desert Bluffs Lifestyle and Home Journal_ (E-Reader Edition). He flips through a number of articles of limited interest (‘Shock True Life Stories: Monster Co-worker Suggested Longer Coffee Breaks’; ‘Decorating With Offal: 8 Fresh Ways To Bring The Insides In’) before something catches his eye as it glides past, causing him to pause and scroll back.

>   
>  **_Say ‘I Grew!’_ **
> 
> _Marriage rituals are not just for your primitive forbearers anymore! Find out why successful young couples are flocking back to one of our oldest and bloodiest institutions._
> 
> _Did you know…?_
> 
> _Marriage – or ‘ **social consolidation** ’ as it has now been rebranded – is an effective way of streamlining your own and a chosen domestic partner’s life. Joint tax returns and bank accounts, and single-name correspondence are just the start of this exciting venture! _
> 
> _“Think of it as a franchise,” StrexCorp VP Lauren Mallard told us in an exclusive memo. “You own the original business – yourself! – but you can authorize another business person to use your name… just as long as they abide by the mission statement of your personal brand, of course! You do need to work out these details in advance as they will be contractually binding. Oh, and some couples will even be able to grow their business with the pitter-patter of tiny franchisee feet! How exciting!”_

Kevin skips the testimonials that follow to reach the article’s next section. 

>   
>  **_Are you and your partner ready for social consolidation? Take our quiz to find out._ **
> 
> _1) Is your partner a sentient being?_
> 
> _Some readers may cry ‘prejudice!’ to this, but we at DBH &LM say the old-fashioned way is sometimes the best way. Sure, the StrexCorp Employee Handbook might provide hours of entertainment, but can it hold you at night and whisper tips for increased productivity in your ear? Work on your social networking skills, reader.* _
> 
> _* Consult your physician or your local publican if you require a gregariousness enhancer._

Kevin adds a tick to the ‘yes’ box with a swipe of his finger. 

> _  
> 2) Is your partner aware of your affections?_
> 
> _Aggressive online stalking or good old-fashioned watching a stranger from the bushes – these activities can be as productive as they are fun when the information gathered is used for targeted marketing or to add depth to a performance review. However, they do not constitute a romantic relationship. As Vice President Mallard says: “remember, it’s a merger, not a hostile takeover!” So ask yourself – are we Facebook official? If the answer is no, you have some self-upselling to do!_

Kevin cocks his head to one side and re-reads the criteria. It did use to trouble him that he couldn’t lay claim to the sensation called ‘love’ in the way that seems so easy and natural to César. César whispers love into his ear after they have sex. He texts Kevin about it in awkward contractions and heart-eyed emojis. He leaves it murmured against Kevin’s cheek in the morning with his sloppy goodbye kiss. Kevin isn’t totally devoid of emotions – he can feel certain things in a limited way: joy, for example, when he talks about the town and their beloved collective employer on the radio; anger when he ponders the existence of people who fail to reach their full productive potential. Small, subtle things (like love) escape him, though. Kevin had begun to doubt that he would ever be able to relate to and express romantic sentiments until he encountered an extremely helpful BuzzFeed quiz on ‘Which Style of Lover Are you?’ and learned that while some people are ‘the Verbally Expressive Lover’ (like César), there are many other types including ‘the Deeds of Service Lover.’ When Kevin read over the description of this latter category he found it a great deal more manageable. Now when he accomplishes a small task for César he feels a sense of satisfaction, as if he has stated an affirmation. Glancing back to the article, he widens his smile and adds another tick. 

> _  
> 3) Have you reached a consensus regarding physical intimacy?_
> 
> _Sex issues can be a real source of conflict in long-term relationships, so make sure you’re both on the same page! Whether you’re “at it” every moment your mutual work schedules allow; have resigned yourselves to separate beds through mutual loathing; or have simply evolved beyond the need for a corporeal form ¬– communication is key!_

Kevin ponders this one for a few moments: they haven’t verbally agreed to a schedule of physical intimacy, but it has established a certain… pattern. Once or twice in the week César initiates their lovemaking, squeezing Kevin from behind in bed, kissing his neck and murmuring that profanity-laden nonsense that makes desire crawl up Kevin’s spine. They also have a game they play together every Saturday – Kevin didn’t quite realise at first what it was he was doing, but now he both schedules time for and eagerly anticipates it. 

Kevin closes his eyelids and thinks back to that very morning. He had set his alarm to wake him an hour early. He left César still dozing and went to shower, returning shaved, scented and soft with lotion. He went to his side of the chest of drawers and pulled on underwear, every movement deliberate – though he refused to turn to see if César was looking yet, snapping the elastic against his hip. Next he crossed to the closet and examined at his clothes, spending a long time brushing his fingers against the fabric, walking them towards the back where the older garments hang – the ones he doesn’t remember buying, that fit his body tightly and don’t always zip or button up all the way because at some point he used to be thinner. Still, he knows they are his clothes; knows by the way the fabric feels good against his skin and the colours suit his complexion. 

This time Kevin decided to tease a little – trying on a pants suit first, removing and rehanging it before moving on to his real choice, the white shirt with the darting that made it taper in at his waist and the black skirt that fell to just below his knees and pulled tight across the widest point of his thighs. He zipped it as far as it would go and moved to stand in front of the mirror, smoothing his hands over his body. In the mirror he looked up at the reflection of the bed; from amongst the rumpled covers he caught the glint of César’s eyes and then his golden teeth as his lips pulled apart in a smile. Then came the low, sleepy rumble of his voice: “And just where do you think you’re going?”

“Work, César,” Kevin replied lightly, stepping into a pair of shoes – always the same ones, the black patent leather stilettos that he found squashed in the back of his old closet when he was packing up to move; the ones that remember the shape of his feet and embrace them snugly. He paused to appreciate the faint sensation of burning in the calf muscles and then approached the bed with slow, measured steps.

“Help me fasten this,” he said, easing down onto the mattress and turning his back. César briefly humoured him, swirling his fingertips over the thin silk of the shirt peeking from between the sundered sides of fabric before tugging on the unwilling zipper. Then his hands slipped around to the front, dragging across Kevin’s stomach in a possessive caress.

“Mmm,” César grunted, pulling Kevin back by his hips so he could grind against the swell of his ass, “so much junk in the trunk you’re spilling over, baby.”

“César! You’re not helping,” Kevin’s voice when they were playing out this scenario was different from his everyday voice, breathy and low. “Let go already you horny slob!”

“You love this,” César insisted, pulling Kevin down on the bed with him. “Love it when I get up on you like this.” He got one knee over Kevin’s thighs and leaned his weight on top of him. 

Kevin made a half-hearted effort to struggle, complaining over and over about how late he would be, how much trouble he would be in, all of which protests only made César more eager (“Oh yeah? Your boss going to spank you, baby? Gonna make you beg?”). It was all part of the loose script they had developed for the encounter – a set of phrases and actions that could be switched around or elaborated depending on their particular mood.

It all led to César tugging and shimmying the skirt down Kevin’s thighs, grunting with the effort. “Gotta fuckin’ have you like this, you know it makes me crazy.”

Kevin did know, though not in any way he could analyze in detail. For César it’s something about the clothes and the way they fit (or don’t fit) Kevin’s body; for Kevin it’s something about the idea (even if it is a fiction) that he would let his boyfriend make him late, that he would defy the personal organizer and its meticulous boxes just because César wants to have his way with him. 

Once they got sufficiently into it the words weren’t important any more – the memory of them just remained as a warm buzz at the back of Kevin’s skull as he felt the pressure and slide of César’s finger slipping into him, the lovely sharp tingle of his boyfriend’s teeth on the back of his neck (later, at work, he probed the remaining indentations with his finger nail as he read the traffic report). He luxuriated in the sensation of being constrained by fabric around his knees and rucked up across his shoulders; the breeze from the fan across the room playing over the bare flesh of his back, buttocks and thighs as he bucked between the rough friction of the sheets and the stretch and pull of César’s dick inside him. 

In the present, Kevin shifts subtly in his seat as he thinks about César’s hand pressing hard on his shoulder and the heat and weight of him. He thinks about being pulled backwards until his legs left the mattress and he was half kneeling and half sprawled on his belly, giving César a better angle and balance to push back in and give it to him harder. He clenches one hand on his knee and feels the twinge of the carpet burn hidden there beneath the fabric. It conjures another sense-memory: César (sweating, groaning fervently) muttered for Kevin to touch himself and when he did, his own penis felt hot and unfamiliar in his hand—

Suddenly, the sound of screaming from someone less enamored of the salon’s no-nonsense approach to hair relaxing causes him to blink back to awareness of where and when he is. He refocuses his eyes on his place in the article. He reaches out with his forefinger to swipe a very confident tick, then he moves on to the next question.

*~*~*

César pulls his car up to the curb and leans across the passenger seat to pop the door catch. 

“You’re only six minutes late,” Kevin says as he jumps in, not knowing whether he intends this to be praise or a criticism.

César looks him up and down and covers his mouth with his fingers in an affectation of surprise. “Well hello there Miss Minaj, I’m flattered, but you know, I’m actually here to pick up my boyfriend¬-”

“Not funny.” Kevin says, which is just what he said last time when he was greeted as ‘Miss Carey’, and the time before that when he was ‘Mrs Knowles-Carter’.

César kisses his cheek. “You have a nice time at the beauty parlor?”

“Aesthetician!” Kevin corrects, flipping down the sunshade to glance at himself in the tiny rectangle of mirror, turning his head from side to side.

“Well, you look real good, baby.”

Kevin makes a dubious sound, flexing out his fingers. “They never get the points right on my nails.” He glances down and smoothes out his vest, adding, “and I’m not convinced by this blood-spatter pattern.”

“I like it. It’s a kinda… minimalist, less-is-more deal?” César flips on the turn signal and pulls out onto the street. “So what you want to do about dinner? We have some leftovers, but if you want to go out and let everyone bask in the majesty of your new ‘do…”

“Well,” Kevin cocks his head to one side in a thoughtful attitude, “I do have excess leisure-funds to spend before they revert back to the company.” 

“You want to try that new place, the one with the all-protein menu?”

“I don’t care, wherever you want,” Kevin says, still examining his nails with a frown.

“Uh-uh. We’re not playing the ‘whatever you want’ game tonight. Just pick somewhere.”

“The place you just said. Honestly, I’ve been meaning to try it.” He turns from scrutinizing his own appearance to that of his boyfriend. “What is that you have on?”

“I don’t know,” César glances down at himself, “a shirt?”

“Where did you get it?”

“Uh, laundry basket?”

“That’s the clothing I haven’t ironed yet, silly. The shirts I ironed for you are in the left-hand closet.”

“That altar-thing you set up in there freaks me out.”

“Honestly, you take exception to the strangest things. You know I don’t like it when you go out looking disheveled,” Kevin says sternly as he reaches up to smooth César’s collar.

César focusses his eyes on the road. “I’m a constant source of embarrassment to you, huh? Worried people will think you’re lazy by association?”

“No, but I don’t want people thinking I don’t care for you.” Kevin tilts his head to the side critically. “Are you sure I can’t add a little decoration to that?”

“Very sure.” 

Kevin reaches over to prod his cheek. “You know, you should smile more, César.”

“I’m smiling on the inside.” 

“I do hope so,” Kevin says as he reaches into his messenger bag to hunt out his organizer and scan for updated tasks. The memo-to-self he attached to the time block marked ‘travel’ prompts him to say: “hey, César, do you think we should get married?”

César makes an odd sound somewhere in the base of his throat and the car swerves and then is brought quickly back under control. “Uh, what?”

“Married. I mean that’s the old-fashioned name, I guess ¬– ‘social consolidation’ is more _now_.”

“Why… would we do that?”

“There are lots of financial and social advantages. And we passed the quiz in the magazine.”

“You want to get married because a magazine said so?”

“Is there a good reason why not?”

“It doesn’t work that way, Kev. You can’t just say ‘eh… why not?’”

“Oh no? I didn’t realise you were an expert.”

A muscle jumps in César’s cheek as his jaw tenses. “I am the opposite of an expert.”

Kevin gives a soft laugh. “Well then, you should just listen to me, and the _Desert Bluffs Home and Lifestyle Journal_.”

“Is that the same magazine that persuaded you ‘liver’ was the shade of the year? Because I could really have lived without that accent wall in the living room. And what the hell ever you painted it with that somehow never dries.”

“Well excuse me for wanting to add a welcoming glow to our home.”

“Who’s their style editor - Ed Gein?”

“I don’t understand that reference, but I’m sure this Mr. Gein’s taste was _impeccable_.”

“Uh-huh.” 

Silence prevails for a long moment and then Kevin presses: “So, are we going to dinner or not?”

“Sure, baby.”

“And are we getting married?”

“No!” César throws one hand up. “I thought that part was pretty clear.”

“I was just asking for clarification, you don’t need to get snippy. You just missed the turn-off.”

César mutters a low, rapid succession of swears in non-weird Spanish and squints at the signs on the upcoming intersection. “What’s the place called again?”

“ _Flesh Fiesta_.”

“Jesus,” César yanks the car into a U-turn at the first gap in traffic. “This town, man.”

*~*~*

César is uncharacteristically quiet over dinner, so Kevin fills up the gaps in conversation with his dream-visions of future financial reports. 

“That was great, didn’t you think?” he asks as they head back to the parking lot. “So authentic!”

“Authentic of what?” 

Kevin laughs gaily. “Oh, you!”

César gives him a sideways look with his mouth in a line. Based on prior observation that face means ‘worried’. Kevin is pleased he can recognize it. 

When they get back into the car, César tilts his head back against the headrest and sighs, drumming his fingers on the wheel. “Hey, he says, “you feel like going for a drive?”

“A drive where?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere.”

Kevin thinks for a moment. “Well, we never did make it to Night Vale.”

“You want to give it another shot?”

“Sure!”

As they speed down Route 800, the light starts to dim, blurring the edges of the large rock formations and turning the cacti into looming, humanoid figures.

“Looks like they fixed that glitch, huh?” César observes as they pass the ‘Night Vale 8 Miles’ sign. When he spots a clearing among the cacti, he pulls off the road and leans forward to peer out of the windshield to the far distance. “You want to keep going?”

Kevin doesn’t reply immediately. The distant stars make him feel… something – a heaviness that sits upon his chest and tightens his throat. He hasn’t experienced fear, anxiety or sadness in a long time, so he can’t exactly remember how each feels, or how to tell them apart. 

César turns off the engine and looks over at him, then reaches out with one hand to squeeze his shoulder. “Hey champ, you doing ok?”

“I’m fine.” Kevin opens the passenger-side door and steps out onto the sandy verge of the road. César follows, stretching and rolling his head forwards and around. He takes a few steps, then leans back on the dented hood of the vehicle and wipes away red dust in a large semicircle next to him with the sleeve of his shirt before patting the cleaned patch of warmed metal in invitation. Kevin sits and lets César sling a companionable arm over his thigh, hand curling around the outside of his knee in a gentle, inquiring sort of way, like a child wanting to familiarize itself with the shape of a new object.

“Hey…” he says, eyes dark and liquid-looking in the darkness. “Look, did I fuck up earlier?”

“Maybe,” Kevin blinks and tries to cast his mind back. “What did you try to do? Oh smiling god, you didn’t try to recalculate the tip again, did you? You know you can’t do decimals.”

César shakes his head, tracing a figure of eight pattern on Kevin’s kneecap with his thumbnail. The carpet burn itches and tingles. “No, I mean with the marriage stuff. I didn’t handle that conversation very well, I guess.”

“Oh! Oh, I don’t know. The article didn’t provide a transcript for exactly how the conversation should go. Should there been advance notice, do you think? Should we have gotten our accountants involved?”

The lines around César’s eyes crease up and he shows his upper teeth (and one of Kevin’s) in a smile. “You meant it how you said it, huh? It really is something you just read about in a magazine and thought would be neat.”

“Why, what did you think?”

“I don’t know.” He lifts his shoulders up near his ears and lets them slump back down again. “People make a big deal out of it. I guess I was worried you’d think I was rejecting you – that I don’t want to be with you. And I really do, baby. You’re the realest thing to me, you know – in all of this.”

“I’m definitely real, César. My station ID badge says so right under ‘ontological status’.”

“I love you, you know?” César leans over and kisses him on the corner of his mouth. 

Kevin nods and reaches up to brush a messy strand of hair off César’s forehead; the other man smiles again and presses Kevin’s palm to his cheek, kissing his wrist. 

Kevin cards his fingertips through the strands at his boyfriend’s temple and thinks about César’s hair is softer now, and less unruly, as he allows Kevin to trim it for him and submits to a weekly deep-conditioning regime. Though César would never go to an aesthetician, he loves to be cared for. Often, as foreplay, Kevin rubs scented lotion all over his body, not neglecting all the most intimate places (his closed eyelids, so vulnerable and paper-thin; the sensual bow of his mouth; his large chocolate-brown nipples). Sometimes Kevin takes the large powder brush he normally uses to apply mattifier to his t-zone or redistribute speckles of dried blood on his cheeks, and he uses it to trace ticklish patterns over César’s face and neck. 

When Kevin does these things, César does not keep up his usual patter of jokes and lewd encouragements; instead, he becomes silent and pliant. Kevin thinks it might be important that only he gets to see this side of César. It makes him think of how a dog will roll on its back, showing its belly in a show of submission. César is loud and brash and hates rules, but he lets Kevin make him quiet and gentle.

“It’s hard to explain. I guess… the contract, you know. Having every second of my day mapped out in little coloured boxes. I just want something that’s mine because I want it, not ‘cause I’m contractually obliged. It means more to me that way. You know?”

“Not really. Contracts are good, César. The fine prints binds us all together. It lets us know exactly where we stand”

“Is that what you’re worried about – that I’m just gonna take off, or wake up one morning and not love you?”

“I don’t worry, César.” 

“I know you say that, but I know sometimes it’s hard for you to follow all this stuff. The relationship stuff. And like I said, I’m the opposite of an expert, but this is…” he gestures to encompass them both, “this is good. I feel that. I’m right where I’m meant to be.” He looks up at the stars, then towards Night Vale and its strange, hovering lights. “We don’t need a piece of paper to be a family, you know?”

“Family,” Kevin repeats absently. The word feels strange in his mouth. “I used to have one of those, I’m almost sure I did.” He blinks and looks back to César. “Oh, but what about your daughter? Isn’t she your real family?”

“I’m always going to love Soph, and get out to see her just as much as that stupid contract allows, but I’ll always come right back. So don’t worry, ok?”

“I don’t¬—“

“—Yeah, I get it. You’re a regular emotionless Strex drone, I know.” César slings an arm around his neck, faintly mussing Kevin’s hair in an effort to plant a kiss on his cheek.

“Sometimes though,” Kevin reflects in a bright, pleasant tone, “I sure do experience _frustration_.”

César raises his eyebrows. “Not sexual frustration, right?”

“No.”

This admission provokes a low, insinuating chuckle. “That’s right baby, you know what I’m good for.” César kisses Kevin’s neck and slides a hand up his inner thigh. “Mmm. Want me to take care of you right now? Want me to strip off your panties and blow you right here, just let anyone who drives past see? Think they’re kinky in Night Vale, huh? Think they like that?”

“I don’t know. But I know that _you_ won’t like it when the sandstorm starts up.”

“Huh?”

“Weren’t you listening to the weather? It was _modal jazz_ , César.” Kevin gives him a significant look. “I wouldn’t want to be caught outside in that.”

“Then I guess we’d better get inside real quick.” César hops down off the car hood and jerks his thumb towards Desert Bluffs. “C’mon baby, let’s go home.” 

As César turns the car in a wide arc and back onto the road, Kevin leans down and flicks on the radio. From out of the static they hear the blurt of a man’s voice.

_“— not one person. How lonely that would be! A couple who has made themselves one so completely, that they are once again alone._

_We are two people, separate. Unique. And joined only where we choose to join.”_


End file.
